THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


SHAKESPEARE'S 


LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS 


CONSIDERED. 


BY 

JOHN  LOKD  CAMPBELL,  LL.D.,  F.B.S.E. 

IN 

A  LETTER  TO  J.  PAYNE  COLLIER,  ESQ.,  F.S.A. 


"  Thou  art  clerkly,  thou  art  clerkly  !  " 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor. 


NEW  YORK : 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

346   &  348   BROADWAY. 
M.DCCC.LIX. 


JE? . 

GIFT 


PREFACE. 


WHEN  my  old  and  valued  friend,  Mr.  Payne 
Collier,  received  the  following  Letter,  which. 
I  wrote  with  a  view  to  assist  him  in  his 
Shakespearian  lucubrations,  he  forthwith,  in 
terms  which  I  should  like  to  copy  if  they 
were  not  so  complimentary,  strongly  recom- 
mended me  to  print  and  publish  it  in  my 
own  name, — intimating  that  I  might  thus 
have  "the  glory  of  placing  a  stone  on  the 
lofty  OAIRN  of  our  immortal  bard."  If  he 
had  said  a  "pelible"  the  word  would  have 
been  more  appropriate.  But  the  hope  of 
making  any  addition,  even  if  infinitesimally 
small,  to  this  great  national  monument,  is 
enough  to  induce  me  to  follow  my  friend's 
advice,  although  I  am  aware  that  by  the  at- 
tempt I  shall  be  exposed  to  some  peril.  In 


4c  PEEFACE. 

pointing  out  Shakespeare's  frequent  use  of 
law-phrases,  and  the  strict  propriety  with 
which  he  always  applies  them,  the  CHIEF 
JUSTICE  may  be  likened  to  the  COBBLER, 
who,  when  shown  the  masterpiece  of  a  great 
painter,  representing  the  Pope  surrounded  by 
an  interesting  historical  group,  could  not  be 
prevailed  upon  to  notice  any  beauty  in  the 
painting,  except  the  skilful  structure  of  a 
slipper  worn  by  his  Holiness. 

Nevertheless  I  may  meet  with  kinder 
critics,  and  some  may  think  it  right  to  coun- 
tenance any  effort  to  bring  about  a  "  fusion 
of  Law  and  Literature,"  which,  like  "Law 
and  Equity/'  have  too  long  been  kept  apart 
in  England. 

STEATHEDEN  HOUSE,  Jan.  1, 1859. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION,          .            .            .            .  .7 

THE  MEREY  WIVES  OF  WINDSOR,           .            .  39 

MEASUEE  FOE  MEASURE,      .            .            .  .41 

THE  COMEDY  OF  EEEOES,            ...  44 

As  You  LIKE  IT,                  «            .            .  .47 

MUCH  ADO  ABOUT  NOTHING,      .           .            .  53 

LOVE'S  LABOUE'S  LOST,        .            .            .  .56 

MIDSUMMEE  NIGHT'S  DBEAM,     ...  57 

THE  MEE CHANT  OF  VENICE,            .            .  .59 

THE  TAMING  OF  THE  SHEEW,      ...  63 

ALL'S  WELL  THAT  ENDS  WELL,        .            .  .67 

THE  WINTEE'S  TALE,      ....  71 

KING  JOHN,              .            .            .  74 

KING  HENEY  THE  FOUBTH,  PART  I.,                  .  73 

KING  HENEY  THE  FOUETH,  PAET  II.,          .  .     82 

KING  HENEY  THE  SIXTH,  PAET  II.,        .           .  91 

TEOILUS  AND  CEESSIDA,       .            .            .  .96 

KINGLEAE,        .....  97 

HAMLET,       .            .            .            .            .  ^  103 

MACBETH,           ....  HI 


6  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

OTHELLO,      ......  112 

ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA,          .  .  .        117 

CORIOLANUS,  .  .  .  .  .119 

ROMEO  AND  JULIET,        .  .  .  .120 

POEMS,         ......  123 

SHAKESPEARE'S  WILL,          .  .  .  .128 

RETROSPECT,      .  .  .  .  .132 


SHAKESPEARE'S 

LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS    CONSIDERED. 


To  J.  Payne  Collier,  Esq., 

Riverside,  Maidenhead,  Berks. 

HARTRIGGE,  JEDBURGH,  N.  B. 
September  15th,  1858. 

MY  DEAR  MB.  PAYNE  COLLIER, 

Knowing  that  I  take  great  delight  in 
Shakespeare's  plays,  and  that  I  have  paid 
some  attention  to  the  common  law  of  this 
realm,  and  recollecting  that  both  in  my  ( Lives 
of  the  Chancellors/  and  in  my  c  Lives  of  the 
Chief  Justices/  I  have  glanced  at  the  subject 
of  Shakespeare's  legal  acquirements,  you  de- 
mand rather  peremptorily  my  opinion  upon 
the  question  keenly  agitated  of  late  years, 

whether  Shakespeare  was  a  clerk  in  an  at- 
1* 


8      SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL 

torney's  office  at  Stratford  before  lie  joined 
the  players  irv  London  ? 

From  your  indefatigable  researches  and 
your  critical  ticunien,  which  have  thrown  so 
much  new  light  upon  the  career  of  our  un- 
rivalled dramatist,  I  say,  with  entire  sincerity, 
that  there  is  no  one  so  well  qualified  as  your- 
self to  speak  authoritatively  in  this  contro- 
versy, and  I  observe  that  in  both  the  editions 
of  your  '  Life  of  Shakespeare '  you  are  strongly 
inclined  to  the  belief  that  the  author  of c  Ham- 
let 9  was  employed  some  years  in  engrossing 
deeds,  serving  writs,  and  making  out  bills  of 
costs. 

However,  as  you  seem  to  consider  it  still 
an  open  question,  and  as  I  have  a  little  leisure 
during  this  long  vacation,  I  cannot  refuse  to 
communicate  to  you  my  sentiments  upon  the 
subject,  and  I  shall  be  happy  if,  from  my  pro- 
fessional knowledge  and  experience,  I  can 
afford  you  any  information  or  throw  out  any 
hints  which  may  be  useful  to  you  hereafter. 
I  myself,  at  any  rate,  must  derive  some  bene- 
fit from  the  task,  as  it  will  for  a  while  drive 
from  my  mind  the  recollection  of  the  wrang- 


A   CASE  FOR   A   JUKY.  !) 

lings  of  Westminster  Hall.  In  literary  pur- 
suits should  I  have  wished  ever  to  be  en- 
gaged,— 

"  Me  si  fata  meis  paterentur  ducere  vitam 
Auspiciis,  et  sponte  mea  componere  curas." 

Having  read  nearly  all  that  has  been  writ- 
ten on  Shakespeare's  ante-Londinensian  life, 
and  carefully  examined  his  writings  with  a 
view  to  obtain  internal  evidence  as  to  his  edu- 
cation and  breeding,  I  am  obliged  to  say  that 
to  the  question  you  propound  no  positive  an- 
swer can  very  safely  be  given. 

Were  an  issue  tried  before  me  as  Chief 
Justice  at  the  Warwick  assizes,  "whether 
William  Shakespeare,  late  of  Stratford-upon- 
Avon,  gentleman,  ever  was  clerk  in  an  at- 
torney's office  in  Stratford-upon-Avon  afore- 
said," I  should  hold  that  there  is  evidence  to 
go  to  the  jury  in  support  of  the  affirmative, 
but  I  should  add  that  the  evidence  is  very  far 
from  being  conclusive,  and  I  should  tell  the 
twelve  gentlemen  in  the  box  that  it  is  a  case 
entirely  for  their  decision, — without  venturing 
even  to  hint  to  them,  for  their  guidance,  any 


10    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

opinion  of  my  own.  Should  they  unanimously 
agree  in  a  verdict  either  in  the  affirmative  or 
negative,  I  do  not  think  that  the  court,  sitting 
in  bancOj  could  properly  set  it  aside  and  grant 
a  new  trial.  But  the  probability  is  (particu- 
larly if  the  trial  were  by  a  special  jury  of  Fel- 
lows of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries)  that,  after 
they  had  been  some  hours  in  deliberation,  I 
should  receive  a  message  from  them — "  there 
is  no  chance  of  our  agreeing,  and  therefore 
we  wish  to  be  discharged  ;  "  that  having  sent 
for  them  into  court,  and  read  them  a  lecture 
on  the  duty  imposed  upon  them  by  law  of 
being  unanimous,  I  should  be  obliged  to  order 
them  to  be  locked  up  for  the  night ;  that 
having  sat  up  all  night  without  eating  or 
drinking,  and  "  without  fire,  candle-light  ex- 
cepted,"  *  they  would  come  into  court  next 

*  These  are  the  words  of  the  oath  administered  to 
the  bailiff  into  whose  custody  the  jurymen  are  deliver- 
ed. I  had  lately  to  determine  whether  gas-lamps  could 
be  considered  "candle-light."  In  favor  em  vitce,  I  ven- 
tured to  rule  in  the  affirmative ;  and,  the  night  being 
very  cold,  to  order  that  the  lamps  should  be  liberally 
supplied  with  gas,  so  that,  directly  administering  light 
according  to  law,  they  might,  contrary  to  law,  inciden- 
tally administer  heat. 


CONSPIRACY    OF  THE   CKITICS.  11 

morning  pale  and  ghastly,  still  saying  "we 
cannot  agree,"  and  that,  according  to  the 
rigour  of  the  law,  I  ought  to  order  them  to  be 
again  locked  up  as  before  till  the  close  of  the 
assizes,  and  then  sentence  them  to  be  put  into 
a  cart,  to  accompany  me  in  my  progress 
towards  the  next  assize  town,  and  to  be  shot 
into  a  ditch  on  the  confines  of  the  county  of 
Warwick. 

Yet  in  the  hope  of  giving  the  gentlemen 
of  the  jury  a  chance  of  escaping  these  horrors, 
to  which,  according  to  the  existing  state  of 
the  law,  they  would  be  exposed,  and  desiring, 
without  departing  from  my  impartiality,  to 
assist  them  in  coming  to  a  just  conclusion,  I 
should  not  hesitate  to  state,  with  some  ear- 
nestness, that  there  has  been  a  great  deal  of 
misrepresentation  and  delusion  as  to  Shake- 
speare's opportunities  when  a  youth  of  ac- 
quiring knowledge,  and  as  to  the  knowledge 
he  had  acquired.  From  a  love  of  the  incredi- 
ble, and  a  wish  to  make  what  he  afterwards 
accomplished  actually  miraculous,  a  band  of 
critics  have  conspired  to  lower  the  condition 
of  his  father,  and  to  represent  the  son,  when 


12    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

approaching  inan's  estate,  as  still  almost 
wholly  illiterate.  We  have  been  told  that 
his  father  was  a  butcher  in  a  small  provincial 
town ;  that  "  pleasant  Willy "  was  bred  to 
his  father's  business  ;  that  the  only  early  in- 
dication of  genius  which  he  betrayed  was  his 
habit,  while  killing  a  calf,  eloquently  to 
harangue,  the  bystanders ;  that  he  continued 
in  this  occupation  till  he  was  obliged  to  fly 
the  country  for  theft ;  that  arriving  in  Lon- 
don a  destitute  stranger,  he  at  first  supported 
himself  by  receiving  pence  for  holding  gentle- 
men's horses  at  the  theatre  ;  that  he  then 
contrived  to  scrape  an  acquaintance  with  some 
of  the  actors,  and  being  first  employed  as 
prompter,  although  he  had  hardly  learned  to 
read,  he  was  allowed  to  play  some  very  inferior 
parts  himself ; — and  that  without  any  further 
training  he  produced  '  Eichard  III./  '  Othel- 
lo/ '  Macbeth/  and  '  King  Lear/  But, 
whether  Shakespeare  ever  had  any  juridical 
education  or  not,  I  think  it  is  established  be- 
yond all  doubt  that  his  father  was  of  a  re- 
spectable family,  had  some  real  property  by 
descent,  married  a  coheiress  of  an  ancient 


GENTILITY   OF  HIS   FATHER.  13 

house,  received  a  grant  of  armorial  bearings 

from  the   Heralds  with  a  recognition  of  his 
* 

lineage,  was  for  many  years  an  Alderman- of 
Stratford,  and,  after  being  intrusted  by  the 
Corporation  to  manage  their  finances  as  Cham- 
berlain, served  the  office  of  Chief  Magistrate 
of  the  town.  There  are  entries  in  the  Cor- 
poration books  supposed  to  indicate  that  at 
one  period  of  his  life  he  was  involved  in  pe- 
cuniary difficulties  ;  but  this  did  not  detract 
from  his  gentility,  as  is  proved  by  the  subse- 
quent confirmation  of  his  armorial  bearings, 
with  a  slight  alteration  in  his  quartering®, — 
and  he  seems  still  to  have  lived  respectably  in 
Stratford  or  the  neighbourhood.*  That  he 

*  I  am  aware  of  your  suggestion  in  your  £  Life  of 
Shakespeare,5  that  the  first  grant  of  arms  to  the  father 
was  at  a  subsequent  time,  when  the  son,  although  he 
had  acquired  both  popularity  and  property,  was,  on 
account  of  his  profession  (then  supposed  to  be  unfit  for 
a  gentleman),  not  qualified  to  bear  arms.  But  the 
<c  Confirmation  "  in  1596  recites  that  a  patent  had  been 
before,  granted  by  Clarencieux  Cooke  to  John  Shake- 
speare, when  chief  magistrate  of  Stratford,  and,  as  a 
ground  for  the  Confirmation,  that  this  original  patent 
had  been  sent  to  the  Heralds'  Office  when  Sir  William 
Dethick  was  Garter  King-at-Arms.  Against  this  posi- 
tive evidence  we  lawyers  should  consider  the  negative 


14    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

was,  as  has  been  recently  asserted,  a  glover, 
or  that  he  ever  sold  wool  or  butcher's  meat, 
is  not  proved  by  anything  like  satisfactory 
evidence  ; — and,  at  any  rate,  according  to  the 
usages  of  society  in  those  times,  occasional 
dealings  whereby  the  owner  of  land  disposed 
of  part  of  the  produce  of  it  by  retail  were 
reckoned  quite  consistent  with  the  position  of 
a  squire.  At  this  day,  and  in  our  own  coun- 
try, gentlemen  not  unfrequently  sell  their  own 
hay,  corn,  and  cattle,  and  on  the  Continent 
the  high  nobility  are  well  pleased  to  sell  by 
the  bottle  the  produce  of  their  vineyards. 

It  is  said  that  the  worthy  Alderman  could 
not  write  his  own  name.  But  the  fac-simile 
of  the  document  formerly  relied  upon  to  es- 
tablish this  [an '  order,  dated  29th  Sept.;  7 
Eliz.,  for  John  Wheeler  to  take  upon  himself 
the  office  of  Bailiff,  signed  by  nineteen  alder- 
men and  burgesses]  appears  to  me  to  prove 


evidence,  that,  upon  search,  an  entry  of  the  first  grant 
is  not  found,  to  be  of  no  avail :  and  there  could  be  no 
object  in  forging  the  first  grant,  as  an  original  grant  in 
1596  would  have  been  equally  beneficial  both  to  father 
and  son. 


GENTILITY   OF   HIS   FATHER.  15 


the  contrary,  for  the  name  of  Soljtt 
is  subscribed  in  a  strong,  clear  hand,  and 
the  mark,  supposed  to  be  his,  evidently  be- 
longs to  the  name  of  @Cl)0ma0  JBnnm  in  the 
line  below.*  You  tell  us,  in  your  latest  edi- 
tion, of  the  production  of  two  new  documents 
before  the  Shakespeare  Society,  dated  respect- 
ively 3rd  and  9th  Dec.,  11  Bliz.,  which,  it  is 
said,  if  John  Shakespeare  could  have  written, 
would  have  been  signed  by  him,  —  whereas 
they  only  bear  his  mark.  But  in  my  own 
experience  I  have  known  many  instances  of 
documents  bearing  a  mark  as  the  signature 
of  persons  who  could  write  well,  and  this  was 
probably  much  more  common  in  illiterate 
ages,  when  documents  were  generally  authen- 
ticated by  a  seal.  Even  if  it  were  demon- 
strated that  John  Shakespeare  had  not  been 
"  so  well  brought  up  that  he  could  write  his 
name/'  and  that  "  he  had  a  mark  to  himself 
like  an  honest,  plain-dealing  man/'  —  consid- 
ering that  he  was  born  not  very  long  after 


*  See  that  most  elaborate  and  entertaining  book, 
Knighfs  'Life  of  Shakspere,'  1st  ed.,  p.  16. 


16    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

the  wars  of  the  Koses,  this  deficiency  would 
not  weigh  much  in  disproving  his  wealth  or 
his  gentility.  Even  supposing  him  to  have 
been  a  genuine  marksman,  he  was  only  on  a 
par  in  this  respect  with  many  persons  of 
higher  rank,  and  with  several  of  the  most 
influential  of  his  fellow  townsmen.  Of  the 
nineteen  Aldermen  and  -  burgesses  who  signed 
the  order  referred  to,  only  seven  subscribe 
their  names  with  a  pen,  and  the  High  Bailiff 
and  Senior  Alderman  are  among  the  marks- 
men. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  clownish 
condition  of  John  Shakespeare,  that  the 
"  Divine  Williams  "  (as  the  French  call  our 
great  dramatist)  received  an  excellent  school 
education  can  hardly  admit  of  question  or 
doubt.  We  certainly  know  that  he  wrote  a 
beautiful  and  business-like  hand,  which  he 
probably  acquired  early.  There  was  a  free 
grammar  school  at  Stratford,  founded  in  the 
reign  of  Edward  IV.,  and  reformed  by  a  char- 
ter of  Edward  VI.  This  school  was  supplied 
by  a  succession  of  competent  masters  to  teach 
Greek  and  Latin :  and  here  the  sons  of  all 


CULTIVATION   OF  HIS  MIND.  17 

the  members  of  the  corporation  were  entitled 
to  gratuitous  instruction,  and  mixed  with  the 
sons  of  the  neighbouring  gentry.  At  such 
grammar  schools,  generally  speaking,  only  a 
smattering  of  Greek  was  to  be  acquired,  but 
the  boys  were  thoroughly  grounded  in  Latin 
grammar,  and  were  rendered  familiar  with 
the  most  poptflar  Eoman  classics.  Shake- 
speare must  have  been  at  this  school  at  least 
five  years.  His  father's  supposed  pecuniary 
difficulties,  which  are  said  to  have  interrupted 
his  education,  did  not  occur  till  William  had 
reached  the  age  of  14  or  15,  when,  according 
to  the  plan  of  education  which  was  then  fol- 
lowed, the  sons  of  tradesmen  were  put  out  as 
apprentices  or  clerks,  and  the  sons  of  the 
more  wealthy  went  to  the  university.  None 
of  his  school  compositions  are  preserved,  and 
we  have  no  authentic  account  of  his  progress ; 
but  we  know  that  at  these  schools  boys  of 
industry  and  genius  have  become  well  versed 
in  classical  learning.  Samuel  Johnson  said 
that  he  acquired  little  at  Oxford  beyond  what 
he  had  brought  away  with  him  from  Lichfield 
Grammar  School,  where  he  had  been  taught, 


18    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

like  Shakespeare,  as  the  son  of  a  burgess ; 
and  many  from  such  schools,  "without  further 
regular  tuition,  have  distinguished  themselves 
in  literature. 

It  is  said  that  "  the  boy  is  the  father  of 
the  man ; "  and  knowing  the  man,  we  may 
form  a  notion  of  the  tastes  and  habits  of  the 
boy.  Grown  to  be  a  man,  Shakespeare  cer- 
tainly was  most  industrious,  and  showed  an 
insatiable  thirst  for  knowledge.  We  may 
therefore  fairly  infer,  that  from  early  infancy 
he  instinctively  availed  himself  of  every  op- 
portunity of  mental  culture, — 

"  What  time.,  where  lucid  Avon  stray'd, 

To  him  the  mighty  mother  did  unveil 
Her  awful  face : — the  dauntless  child 
Stretched  forth  his  little  arms,  and  smiled." 

The  grand  difficulty  is  to  discover,  or  to 
conjecture  with  reasonable  probability,  how 
Shakespeare  was  employed  from  about  1579, 
when  he  most  likely  left  school,  till  about 
1586,  when  he  is  supposed  to  have  gone  to 
London,  That  during  this  interval  he  was 
merely  an  operative,  earning  his  bread  by 


CULTIVATION   OF  HIS,  MIND.  19 

manual  labour,  in  stitching  gloves,  sorting 
wool,  or  killing  calves,  no  sensible  man  can 
possibly  imagine.  At  twenty-three  years  of 
age,  although  he  had  not  become  regularly 
learned  as  if  he  had  taken  the  degree  of 
M.  A.  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge,  after  disput- 
ing in  the  schools  de  omni  scibili  et  quolibet 
ente, — there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  like  our 
Scottish  BURNS,  his  mind  must  have  been 
richly  cultivated,  and  that  he  had  laid  up  a 
vast  stock  of  valuable  knowledge  and  of  poet- 
ical imagery,  gained  from  books,  from  social 
intercourse,  and  from  the  survey  of  nature. 
Whoever  believes  that  when  Shakespeare  was 
first  admitted  to  play  a  part  in  the  Black- 
friars  Theatre  his  mind  was  as  unfurnished 
as  that  of  the  stolid  e  Clown '  in  the  '  Win- 
ter's Tale/  who  called  forth  a  wish  from  his 
own  father  that  "  there  were  no  age  between 
ten  and  three  and  twenty,"  will  readily  give 
credit .  to  all  the  most  extravagant  and  ap- 
palling marvels  of  mesmerism,  clairvoyance, 
table-turning,  and  spirit-rapping. 

Of  Shakespeare's  actual  occupations  dur- 
ing these  important  years,  when  his  character 


20    SHAKESPEABE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

was  formed,  there  is  not  a  scintilla  of  contem- 
porary proof;  and  the  vague  traditionary  evi- 
dence which  has  been  resorted  to  .was  picked 
up  many  years  after  his  death,  when  the 
object  was  to  startle  the  world  with  things 
strange  and  supernatural  respecting  him. — 
That  his  time  was  engrossed  during  this  in- 
terval by  labouring  as  a  mechanic,  is  a  suppo- 
sition which  I  at  once  dismiss  as  absurd. 

Aubrey  asserts  that  from  leaving  school 
till  he  left  Warwickshire  Shakespeare  was  a 
schoolmaster.  If  this  could  be  believed,  it 
would  sufficiently  accord  with  the  phenomena 
of  Shakespeare's  subsequent  career,  except  the 
familiar,  profound,  and  accurate  knowledge  he 
displayed  of  juridical  principles  and  practice. 
Being  a  schoolmaster  in  the  country  for  some 
years  (as  Samuel  Johnson  certainly  was),  his' 
mental  cultivation  would  have  certainly  ad- 
vanced, and  so  he  might  have  been  prepared 
for  the  arena  in  which  he  was  to  appear  on 
his  arrival  in  the  metropolis. 

Unfortunately,'  however,  the  pedagogical 
theory  is  not  only  quite  unsupported  by  evi- 
dence, but  it  is  not  consistent  with  established 


OCCUPATIONS  AFTER  LEAVING  SCHOOL.      21 

facts.  From  the  registration  of  the  baptism 
of  Shakespeare's  children,  and  other  well 
authenticated  circumstances,  we  know  that 
he  continued  to  dwell  in  Stratford,  or  the  im- 
mediate neighbourhood,  till  he  became  a  citi- 
zen of  London  :  there  was  no  other  school  in 
Stratford  except  the  endowed  grammar  school, 
where  he  had  been  a  pupil;  of  this  he  certain- 
ly never  was  master,  for  the  unbroken  succes- 
sion of  masters  from  the  reign  of  Edward  VI. 
till  the  reign  of  James  I.  is  on  record  ;  none 
of  the  mob  who  stand  out  for  Shakespeare  be- 
ing quite  illiterate  will  allow  that  he  was 
qualified  to  be  usher ;  and  there  is  no  trace 
of  there  having  been  any  usher  employed  in 
this  school. 

It  may  likewise  be  observed  that  if  Shake- 
speare really  had  been  a  schoolmaster,  he  prob- 
ably would  have  had  some  regard  for  the 
"order"  to  which  he  belonged.  In  all  his 
dramas  we  have  three  schoolmasters  only,  and 
he  makes  them  all  exceedingly  ridiculous. 
First  we  have  Holofernes  in  '  Love's  Labour 's 
Lost/  who  is  brought  on  the  stage  to  be  laugh- 
ed at  for  his  pedantry  and  his  bad  verses;  then 


22    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

comes  the  Welshman,  Sir  Hugh  Evans,  in  the 
c  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor/  who,  although  in 
holy  orders,  has  not  yet  learned  to  speak  the 
English  language  ;  and  last  of  all,  Pinch,  in 
the  '  Comedy  of  Errors/  who  unites  the  bad 
qualities  of  a  pedagogue  and  a  conjuror. 

By  the  process  of  exhaustion,  I  now 
arrive  at  the  only  other  occupation  in  which 
it  is  well  possible  to  imagine  that  Shakespeare 
could  be  engaged  during  the  period  we  are 
considering— that  of  an  attorney's  clerk — first 
suggested  by  Chalmers,  and  since  counte- 
nanced by  Malone,  yourself  and  others,  whose 
opinions  are  entitled  to  high  respect,  but  im- 
pugned by  nearly  an  equal  number  of  biogra- 
phers and  critics  of  almost  equal  authority, 
— without  any  one,  on  either  side,  having  as 
yet  discussed  the  question  very  elaborately. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  no  es- 
tablished fact  with  which  this  supposition  is 
not  consistent.  At  Stratford  there  was,  by 
royal  charter,  a  court  of  record,  with  jurisdic- 
tion over  all  personal  actions  to  the  amount 
of  30?.,  equal,  at  the  latter  end  of  the  reign 
of  Elizabeth,  to  more  than  100Z.  in  the  reign 


WAS  HE  AN  ATTORNEY'S  CLERK?        23 

of  Victoria.  This  court,  the  records  of  which 
are  extant,  was  regulated  by  the  course  of 
practice  and  pleading  which  prevailed  in  the 
superior  courts  of  law  at  Westminster,  and 
employed  the  same  barbarous  dialect,  com- 
posed of  Latin,  English,  and  Norman-French. 
It  sat  every  fortnight,  and  there  were  belong- 
ing to  it,  besides  the  Town-clerk,  six  attorneys, 
some  of  whom  must  have  practised  in  the 
Queen's  Bench  and  in  Chancery,  and  have 
had  extensive  business  in  conveyancing.  An 
attorney,  steward  of  the  Earl  of  Warwick, 
lord  of  the  manor  of  Stratford,  twice  a  year 
held  a  court-leet  and  view  of  frankpledge 
there,  to  which  a  jury  was  summoned,  and  at 
which  constables  were  appointed  and  various 
presentments  were  made. 

If  Shakespeare  had  been  a  clerk  to  one  of 
these  attorneys,  all  that  followed  while  he  re- 
mained at  Stratford,  and  the  knowledge  and 
acquirements  which  he  displayed  when  he 
came  to  London,  would  not  only  have  been 
within  the  bounds  of  possibility,  but  would 
seem  almost  effect  from  cause — ip.  a  natural 
and  probable  sequence. 


24:    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

From  the  moderate  pay  allowed  him  by 
Ms  master  lie  would  have  been  able  decently 
to  maintain  his  wife  and  children  ;  vacant 
hours  would  have  been  left  to  him  for  the  in- 
dulgence of  his  literary  propensity  ;  and  this 
temporary  attention  to  law  might  have  quick- 
ened his  fancy, — although  a  systematic,  life- 
long devotion  to  it,  I  fear,  may  have  a  very 
different  tendency.  Burke  eloquently  des- 
cants upon  the  improvement  of  the  mental 
faculties  by  juridical  studies ;  and  Warbur- 
ton,  Ohatterton,  Pitt  the  younger,  Canning, 
Disraeli,  and  Lord  Macaulay  are  a  few  out  of 
many  instances  which  might  be  cited  of  men 
of  brilliant  intellectual  career  who  had  early 
become  familiar  with  the  elements  of  jurispru- 
dence. 

Here  would  be  the  solution  of  Shake- 
speare's legalism  which  has  so  perplexed  his 
biographers  and  commentators,  and  which 
Aubrey's  tradition  leaves  wholly  unexplained. 
We  should  only  have  to  recollect  the  maxim 
that  "  the  vessel  long  retains  the  flavour  with 
which  it  has  been  once  imbued."  Great  as  is 
the  knowledge  of  law  which  Shakespeare's 


WAS  HE  AN  ATTORNEY'S  CLERK?         25 

writings  display,  and  familiar  as  he  appears 
to  have  been  with  all  its  forms  and  proceed- 
ings, the  whole  of  this  would  easily  be  account- 
ed for  if  for  some  years  he  had  occupied  a  desk 
in  the  office  of  a  country  attorney  in  good 
business, — attending  sessions  and  assizes, — 
keeping  leets  and  law  days, — and  perhaps  be- 
ing sent  up  to  the  metropolis  in  term  time  to 
conduct  suits  before  the  Lord  Chancellor  or 
the  superior  courts  of  common  law  at  West- 
minster, according  to  the  ancient  practice  of 
country  attorneys,  who  would  not  employ  a 
London  agent  to  divide  their  fees.* 


*  If  Shakespeare  really  was  articled  to  a  Stratford 
attorney,  in  all  probability  during  the  five  years  of  his 
clerkship  he  visited  London  several  times  on  his  mas- 
ter's business,  and  he  may  then  have  been  introduced 
to  the  green  room  at  Blackfriars  by  one  of  his  country- 
men connected  with  that  theatre. 

Even  so  late  as  Queen  Anne's  reign  there  seems  to 
have  been  a  prodigious  influx  of  all  ranks  from  the 
provinces  into  the  metropolis  in  term  time.  During 
the  preceding  century  Parliament  sometimes  did  not 
meet  at  all  for  a  considerable  number  of  years ;  and 
being  summoned  rarely  and  capriciously,  the  "  London 
season"  seems  to  have  been  regulated,  not  by  the 
session  of  Parliament,  but  by  the  law  terms, — 


-  and  prints  before  Term  ends."— - 


26     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

On  the  supposition  of  Shakespeare  having 
been  an  attorney's  clerk  at  Stratford  we 
may  likewise  see  how,  when  very  young,  he 
contracted  his  taste  for  theatricals,  even  if  he 
had  never  left  that  locality  till  the  unlucky 


While  term  lasted,  Westminster  Hall  was  crowded  all 
the  morning,  not  only  by  lawyers,  but  by  idlers  and 
politicians,  in  quest  of  news.  Term  having  ended, 
there  seems  to  have  been  a  general  dispersion.  Even 
the  Judges  spent  their  vacations  in  the  country,  having 
when  in  town  resided  in  their  chambers  in  the  Temple 
or  Inns  of  Court.  The  Chiefs  were  obliged  to  remain 
in  town  a  day  or  two  after  term  for  Nisi  Prius  sittings ; 
but  the  Puisnes  were  entirely  liberated  when  proclama- 
tion was  made  at  the  rising  of  the  court  on  the  last  day 
of  term,  in  the  form  still  preserved,  that  "  all  manner 
of  persons  may  take  their  ease,  and  give  their  attend- 
ance here  again  on  the  first  day  of  the  ensuing  term." 
An  old  lady  very  lately  deceased,  a  daughter  of  Mr. 
Justice  Blackstone,  who  was  a  puisne  judge  of  the 
Common  Pleas  and  lived  near  Abingdon,  used  to  relate 
that  the  day  after  term  ended,  the  family  coach,  with 
four  black  long-tailed  horses,  used  regularly  to  .come 
at  an  early  hour  to  Serjeants'  Inn  to  conduct  them  to 
their  country  house;  and  there  the  Judge  and  his 
family  remained  till  they  travelled  to  London  in  the 
same  style  on  the  session-day  of  the  following  term. 
When  a  student  of  law,  I  had  the  honour  of  being  pre- 
sented to  the  oldest  of  the  judges,  Mr.  Justice  Grose, 
famous  for  his  beautiful  seat  in  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
where  he  leisurely  spent  a  considerable  part  of  the 


STROLLING   PLATEES   AT    STKATFOKD.         27 

affair  of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy's  deer.  It  appears 
from  the  records  of  the  Corporation  of  Strat- 
ford, that  nearly  every  year  the  town  was 
visited  by  strolling  companies  of  players,  call- 
ing themselves  "the  Earl  of  Derby's  ser- 
vants/' "the  Earl  of  Leicester's  servants/' 
and  "  Her  Majesty's  servants."  These  com- 
panies are  most  graphically  represented  to  us 
by  the  strolling  players  in  c  Hamlet '  and  in 
the  (  Taming  of  the  Shrew.'  The  custom  at 
Stratford  was  for  the  players  on  their  arrival 
to  wait  upon  the  Bailiff  and  Aldermen  to 
obtain  a  licence  to  perform  in  the  town.  The 
Guildhall  was  generally  allotted  to  them,  and 
was  fitted  up  as  a  theatre  according  to  the 
simple  and  rude  notions  of  the  age.  We  may 
easily  conceive  that  Will  Shakespeare,  son  of 
the  chief  magistrate  who  granted  the  licence, 
now  a  bustling  attorney's  clerk,  would  actu- 
ally assist  in  these  proceedings  when  his 
master's  office  was  closed  for  the  day ;  and 


year,  more  majorum.  To  his  question  to  me,  "  Where 
do  you  live?"  I  answered,  " I  have  chambers  in  Lin- 
coln's Inn,  my  Lord."  "  Ah  ! "  replied  he,  "  but  I 
mean — when  term  is  over" 


28    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

* 
that  lie  might  thus  readily  become  intimate 

with  the  manager  and  the  performers,  some 
of  whom  were  said  to  be  his  fellow-townsmen. 
He  might  well  have  officiated  as  prompter,  the 
duty  said  to  have  been  first  assigned  to  him 
in  the  theatre  at  the  Blackfriars.  The  travel- 
ling associations  of  actors  at  that  period  con- 
sisted generally  of  not  more  than  from  five  to 
ten  members ;  and  when  a  play  to  be  performed 
in  the  Guildhall  at  Stratford  contained  more 
characters  than  individuals  in  the  list  of 
strollers,  it  would  be  no  great  stretch  of 
imagination  to  suppose  that,  instead  of  muti- 
lating the  piece  by  suppression,  or  awkwardly 
assigning  two  parts  to  one  performer,  "  pleas- 
ant Willy's  "  assistance  was  called  in  ;  and 
our  great  dramatist  may  thus  have  commenced 
his  career  as  an  actor  in  his  native  town. 

To  prove  that  he  had  been  bred  in  an  at- 
torney's office,  there  is  one  piece  of  direct 
evidence.  This  is  an  alleged  libel  upon  him 
by  a  contemporary — published  to  the  world 
in  his  lifetime— which,  if  it  do  actually  refer 
to  him,  must  be  considered  as  the  foundation 
of  a  very  strong  inference  of  the  fact. 


HIS    SUCCESS    AS   AN   ACTOK.  29 

Leaving  Stratford  and  joining  the  players 
in  London  in  1586  or  1587,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  his  success  was  very  rapid ;  for, 
as  early  as  1589,  he  had  actually  got  a  share 
in  the  •  Blackfriars  Theatre,  and  he  was  a 
partner  in  managing  it  with  his  townsman 
Thomas  Green  and  his  countryman  Eichard 
Burbadge.  I  do  not  imagine  that  when  he 
went  up  to  London  he  carried  a  tragedy  in 
his  pocket  to  be  offered  for  the  stage  as 
Samuel  Johnson  did  '  IKENE/  The  more 
probable  conjecture  is,  that  he  began  as  an 
actor  on  the  London  boards,  and  being  em- 
ployed, from  the  cleverness  he  displayed,  to 
correct,  alter,  and  improve  dramas  written  by 
others,  he  went  on  to  produce  dramas  of  his 
own,  which  were  applauded  more  loudly  than 
any  that  had  before  appeared  upon  the  Eng- 
lish stage. 

"  Envy  does  merit  as  its  shade  pursue ;  " 

and  rivals  whom  he  surpassed  not  only  envied 
Shakespeare,  but  grossly  libelled  him.  Of 
this  we  have  an  example  in  c  An  Epistle  to 
the  Gentlemen  Students  of  the  Two  Univer- 


80    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

sities,  by  Thomas  Nash/  prefixed  to  the  first 
edition  of  Kobert  Greene's  ''MENAPHON' 
(which  was  subsequently  called  '  Greene's 
ARCADIA/) — according  to  the  title-page,  pub- 
lished in  1589.  The  alleged  libel  on  Shake- 
speare is  in  the  words  following,  viz. : — 

"  I  will  turn  back  to  my  first  text  of  studies  of  de- 
light, and  talk  a  little  in  friendship  with  a  few  of  our 
trivial  translators.  It  is  a  common  practice  now-a- 
days,  amongst  a  sort  of  shifting  companions  that  run 
through  every  art  and  thrive  by  none,  to  leave  the  trade 
of  Nbverint,  whereto  they  were  born,  and  busy  them- 
selves with  the  endeavours  of  art,  that  could  scarcely 
Latinize  their  neck-vei'le  if  they  should  have  need ;  yet 
English  Seneca,  read  by  candle-light,  yields  many  good 
sentences,  as  Hood  is  a  beggar,  and  so  forth;  and  if  you 
intreat  him  fair,  in  a  frosty  morning,  he  will  afford  you 
whole  Hamlets;  I  should  say  handfuls  of  tragical 
speeches.  But  0  grief!  Tempus  edax  rerum — what  is 
that  will  last  always  ?  The  sea  exhaled  by  drops  will 
in  continuance  be  dry ;  and  Seneca,  let  blood,  line  by 
line,  and  page  by  page,  at  length  must  needs  die  to  our 


Now,  if  the  innuendo  which  would  have 
been  introduced  into  the  declaration  in  an  ac- 
tion, " Shakespeare  v.  Nash"  for  this  libel 


ALLEGED   LIBEL    ON    SHAKESPEAKE.  31 

( — "  thereby  then  and  there  meaning  the  said 
William  Shakespeare" — )  be  made  out,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  remaining  innuendo 
"thereby  then  and  there  meaning  that  the 
said  William  Shakespeare  had  been  an  at- 
torney's clerk,  or  bred  an  attorney." 

In  Elizabeth's  reign  deeds  were  in  the 
Latin  tongue  ;  and  all  deeds  poll,  and  many 
other  law  papers,  began  with  the  words 
"  NOVEBINT  universi  per  presentes  "— "  Be 
it  known  to  all  men  by  these  presents  that, 
&c."  The  very  bond  which  was  given  in 
1582,  prior  to  the  grant  of  a  licence  for 
Shakespeare's  marriage  with  Ann  Hathaway, 
and  which  Shakespeare  most  probably  himself 
drew,  commences  "  NOVEBINT  universi  per 
presentes."  The  business  of  an  attorney 
seems  to  have  been  then  known  as  "  the  trade 
of  NOVEBINT."  Ergo,  "these  shifting 
companions  "  are  charged  with  having  aban- 
doned the  legal  profession,  to  which  they  were 
bred  ;  and,  although  most  imperfectly  edu- 
cated, with  trying  to  manufacture  tragical 
speeches  from  an  English  translation  of  Seneca. 

For  completing  Nash's  testimony  (valeat 


32     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

quantum)  to  the  fact  that  Shakespeare  had 
been  bred  to  the  law,  nothing  remains  but  to 
consider  whether  Shakespeare  is  here  aimed 
at  ?  Now,  independently  of  the  expressions 
"whole  Hamlets"  and  "handfuls  of  tragical 
speeches/'  which,  had  Shakespeare's  '  HAM- 
LET *  certainly  been  written  and  acted  before 
the  publication  of  Nash's  letter,  could  leave 
no  doubt  as  to  the  author's  intention,  there  is 
strong  reason  to  believe  that  the  intended 
victim  was  the  young  man  from  Warwick- 
shire, who  had  suddenly  made  such  a  sensa- 
tion and  such  a  revolution  in  the  theatrical 
world.  Nash  and  Robert  Greene,  the  author 
of  c  Menaphon '  or  '  Arcadia/  the  work  to 
which  Nash's  Epistle  was  appended,  were 
very  intimate.  In  this  very  epistle  Nash 
calls  Greene  "  sweet  friend."  It  is  well 
known  that  this  Eobert  Greene  (who,  it  must 
always  be  remembered,  was  a  totally  different 
person  from  Thomas  Green,  the  actor  and 
part  proprietor  of  the  Blackfriars  Theatre) 
was  one  of  the  chief  sufferers  from  Shakespeare 
being  engaged  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain's 
players  to  alter  stock  pieces  for  the  Black- 


ENMITY    OF   EGBERT    GREENE.  33 

friars  Theatre,  to  touch  up  and  improve  new 
pieces  proposed  to  the  managers,  and  to  sup- 
ply original  pieces  of  his  own.  Kobert  Greene 
had  been  himself  employed  in  this  depart- 
ment, and  he  felt  that  his  occupation  was 
gone.  Therefore,  by  publishing  Nash's  Epis- 
tle in  1589,  when  Shakespeare,  and  no  one 
else,  had,  by  the  display  of  superior  genius, 
been  the  ruin  of  Greene,  the  two  must  have 
combined  to  denounce  Shakespeare  as  having 
abandoned  "  the  trade  of  Noverint "  in  order 
to  "  busy  himself  with  the  endeavours  of  art," 
and  to  furnish  tragical  speeches  from  the 
translation  of  Seneca. 

In  1592  Greene  followed  up  the  attack  of 
1589  in  a  tract  called  c  The  Groatsworth  of 
Wit/  Here  he  does  not  renew  the  taunt  of 
abandoning  "the  trade  of  NOVERINT,"  which 
with  Nash  he  had  before  made,  but  he  point- 
edly upbraids  Shakespeare  by  the  nickname 
of  Shake- scene,  as  "  an  upstart  crow  beautified 
with  our  feathers,"  having  just  before  spoken 
of  himself  as  "  the  man  to  whom  actors  had 
been  previously  beholding."  He  goes  on 

farther  to  allude  to  Shakespeare  as  one  who 
2* 


34:     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

"  supposes  he  is  as  well  able  to  bombast  out  a 
blank  verse  as  the  best  of  his  predecessors/' 
as  "an  absolute  Johannes  Factotum/'  and 
"  in  his  own  conceit  the  only  SHAKE-SCENE 
in  a  country/'  In  1592  Kobert  Greene  frank- 
ly complains  that  Shake-scene  had  unde- 
servedly met  with  such  success  as  to  be  able 
to  drive  him  (Greene)  and  others  similarly 
circumstanced  from  an.  employment  by  which 
they  had  mainly  subsisted.*  This  evidence, 
therefore,  seems  amply  sufficient  to  prove 
that  there  was  a  conspiracy  between  the  two 
libellers,  Nash  and  Kobert  Greene,  and  that 
Shakespeare  was  the  object  of  it. 

But  I  do  not  hesitate  to  believe  that  Nash, 
in  1589,  directly  alludes  to  '  HAMLET  '  as  a 
play  of  Shakespeare,  and  wishes  to  turn  it 
into  ridicule.  I  am  aware  that  an  attempt 
has  been  made  to  show  that  there  had  been 
an  edition  of  f  Menaphon'  before  1589  ;  but 
no  copy  of  any  prior  edition  of  it,  with  Nash's 


*  You  no  doubt  recollect  that  Robert  Greene  ac- 
tually died  of  starvation  before  his  'Groatsworth  of 
"Wit,3  in  which  he  so  bitterly  assailed  Shakespeare  as 
<c  Shake-scene,"  was  published. 


ELABORATION   OF   HIS    PLAYS.  35 

Epistle  appended  to  it,  has  been  produced. 
I  am  also  aware  that  '  Hamlet/  in  the  perfect 
state  in  which  we  now  behold  it,  was  not 
finished  till  several  years  after  ;  but  I  make 
no  doubt  that  before  the  publication  of  Wash's 
Epistle  Shakespeare's  first  sketch  of  his  play 
of  c  Hamlet/  taken  probably  from  some  older 
play  with  the  same  title,  had  been  produced 
upon  the  Blackfriars  stage  and  received  with 
applause  which  generated  envy. 

From  the  saying  -of  the  players,  recorded 
by  BEN  JONSON,  that  Shakespeare  never 
blotted  a  line,  an  erroneous  notion  has  pre- 
vailed that  he  carelessly  sketched  off  his 
dramas,  and  never  retouched  them  or  cared 
about  them  after.  So  far  from  this  (contrary 
to  modern  practice),  he  often  materially  al- 
tered, enlarged,  and  improved  them  subse- 
quently to  their  having  been  brought  out 
upon  the  stage  and  having  had  a  successful 
run.  There  is  clear  proof  that  he  wrote  and 
rewrote  '  Hamlet/  '  Komeo  and  Juliet/  '  The 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor/  and  several  other 
of  his  dramas,  with  unwearied  pains,  making 


36     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

them  at  last  sometimes  nearly  twice  as  long 
as  they  were  when  originally  represented. 

With  respect  to  these  dates  it  is  remarka- 
ble that  an  English  translation  of  Seneca, 
from  which  Shakespeare  was  supposed  to  have 
plagiarised  so  freely,  had  been  published  sev- 
eral years  before  Nash's  Epistle  ; — and  in  the 
scene  with  the  players  on  their  arrival  at 
Elsinore  (if  this  scene  appeared  in  the  first 
sketch  of  the  tragedy,  as  it  probably  did,  from 
being  so  essential  to  the  plot),  Shakespeare's 
acquaintance  with  this  author  was  proclaimed 
by  the  panegyric  of  Polonius  upon  the  new 
company,  for  whom  "  SENECA  could  not  be 
too  heavy  nor  Plautus  too  light/' 

Therefore,  my  dear  Mr.  Payne  Collier,  in 
support  of  your  opinion  that  Shakespeare  had 
been  bred  to  the  profession  of  the  law  in  an 
attorney's  office,  I  think  you  will  be  justified 
in  saying  that  the  fact  was  asserted  publicly 
in  Shakespeare's  lifetime  by  two  contempo- 
raries of  Shakespeare,  who  were  engaged  in 
the  same  pursuits  with  himself,  who  must 
have  known  him  well,  and  who  were  probably 
acquainted  with  the  whole  of  his  career. 


INTERNAL     EVIDENCE.  37 

I  must  likewise  admit  that  this  assertion 
is  strongly  corroborated  by  internal  evidence 
to  be  found  in  Shakespeare's  writings.  I 
have  once  more  perused  the  whole  of  his 
dramas,  that  I  might  more  satisfactorily  an- 
swer your  question,  and  render  you  some  as- 
sistance in  finally  coming  to  a  right  con- 
clusion. 

In  'The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona/ 
'  Twelfth  Night/  'Julius  Csesar/  '  Cymbe- 
line/  '  Timon  of  Athens/  '  The  Tempest/ 
'King  Eichard  II./  '  King  Henry  V./  <  King 
Henry  VI.  Part  I./  '  King  Henry  VI.  Part 
III./  'King  Eichard  III./  'King  Henry 
VIIL/  '  Pericles  of  Tyre/  and  '  Titus  An- 
dronicus '—fourteen  of  the  thirty-seven  dramas 
generally  attributed  to  Shakespeare — I  find 
nothing  that  fairly  bears  upon  this  contro- 
versy. Of  course  I  had  only  to  look  for  ex- 
pressions and  allusions  that  must  be  supposed 
to  come  from  one  who  has  been  a  professional 
lawyer.  Amidst  the  seducing  beauties  of 
sentiment  and  language  through  which  I  had 
to  pick  my  way;  I  may  have  overlooked  vari- 
ous specimens  of  the  article  of  which  I  was  in 


38     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

quest,  which  would  have   been  accidentally 
valuable,  although  intrinsically  worthless. 

However,  from  each  of  the  remaining 
twenty-three  dramas  I  have  made  extracts 
which  I  think  are  well  worth  your  attention. 
These  extracts  I  will  now  lay  before  you,  with 
a  few  explanatory  remarks, — which  perhaps 
you  will  think  demonstrably  prove  that  your 
correspondent  is  a  laivyer,  AND  NOTHING  BUT 

A  LAWYEE. 

I  thought  of  grouping  the  extracts  as  they 
may  be  supposed  to  apply  to  particular  heads 
of  law  or  particular  legal  phrases,  but  I  found 
this  impracticable  ;  and  I  am  driven  to  ex- 
amine seriatim  the  dramas  from  which  the 
extracts  are  made.  I  take  them  in  the  order 
in  which  they  are  arranged,  as  "  Comedies," 
"  Histories,"  and  "  Tragedies,"  in  the  folio  of 
1623,  the  earliest  authority  for  the  whole  col- 
lection. 


THE   MEKKY    WIVES   OF   WINDSOK.  39 


In  Act  ii.  Sc.  2,'  where  Ford,  under  the 
name  of  Master  Brook,  tries  to  induce  Falstaff 
to  assist  him  in  his  intrigue  with  Mrs.  Ford, 
and  states  that  from  all  the  trouble  and  money 
he  had  bestowed  upon  her  he  had  had  no  bene- 
ficial return,  we  have  the  following  question 
and  answer : — 

Fal.  Of  what  quality  was  your  love,  then  ? 

Ford.  Like  a  fair  house  built  upon  another  man's 
ground ;  so  that  /  have  lost  my  edifice  "by  mistaking  the 
place  where  I  erected  it. 

Now  this  shows  in  Shakespeare  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  law  of  real  property,  not  generally 
possessed.  The  unlearned  would  suppose  that 
if,  by  mistake,  a  man  builds  a  fine  house  on 
the  land  of  another,  when  he  discovers  his 
error  he  will  be  permitted  to  remove  all  the 
materials  of  the  structure,  and  particularly 
the  marble  pillars  and  carved  chimney-pieces 
with  which  he  has  adorned  it ;  but  Shake  - 


40     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

speare  knew  better.  He  was  aware  that,  being 
fixed  to  the  freehold,  the  absolute  property  in 
them  belonged  to  the  owner  of  the  soil,  and 
he  recollected  the  maxim,  Gujus  est  solum, 
ejus  est  usque  ad  coelum. 


Afterwards,  in  writing  the  second  scene  of 
Act  iv.,  Shakespeare's  head  was  so  full  of  the 
recondite  terms  of  the  law,  that  he  makes  a 
lady  thus  pour  them  out,  in  a  confidential 
tete-&-t£te  conversation  with  another  lady, 
while  discoursing  of  the  revenge  they  two 
should  take  upon  an  old  gentleman  for  having 
made  an  unsuccessful  attempt  upon  their  vir- 
tue : — 

Mrs.  Page.  I'll  have  the  cudgel  hallowed,  and  hung 
o'er  the  altar :  it  hath  done  meritorious  service. 

Mrs.  Ford.  What  think  you  ?  May  we,  with  the 
warrant  of  womanhood,  and  the  witness  of  a  good  con- 
science, pursue  him  with  any  farther  revenge  ? 

Mrs.  Page.  The  spirit  of  wantonness  is,  sure,  scared 
out  of  him :  if  the  devil  have  him  not  in  fee  simple, 
with  fine  and  recovery,  he  will  never,  I  think,  in  the 
way  of  waste,  attempt  us  again. 


MEASURE   FOR   MEASURE.  41 

Tins  Merry  Wife  of  Windsor  is  supposed 
to  know  that  the  highest  estate  which  the 
devil  could  hold  in  any  of  his  victims  was  a 
fee  simple ,  strengthened  by  fine  and  recovery. 
Shakespeare  himself  may  probably  have  be- 
come aware  of  the  law  upon  the  subject,  when 
it  was  explained  to  him  in  answer  to  questions 
he  put  to  the  attorney,  his  master,  while  en- 
grossing the  deeds  to  be  executed  upon  the 
purchase  of  a  Warwickshire  estate  with  a 
doubtful  title. 


|0r 


In  Act  i.  Sc.  2,  the  old  lady  who  had  kept 
a  lodging-liouse  of  a  disreputable  character  in 
the  suburbs  of  Vienna  being  thrown  into  de- 
spair by  the  proclamation  that  aU  such  houses 
in  the  suburbs  must  be  plucked  down,  the 
Clown  thus  comforts  her  : — 

Clo.  Come ;  fear  not  you :  good  counsellors  lack  no 
clients. 


4:2    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

This  comparison  is  not  very  flattering  to 
the  bar,  but  it  seems  to  show  a  familiarity 
with  both  the  professions  alluded  to. 


In  Act  ii.  Sc.  1,  the  ignorance  of  special 
pleading  and  of  the  nature  of  actions  at  law 
betrayed  by  Elbow,  the  constable,  when  slan- 
dered, is  ridiculed  by  the  Lord  Escalus  in  a 
manner  which  proves  that  the  composer  of  the 
dialogue  was  himself  fully  initiated  in  these 
mysteries  : — 

Elbow.  Oh,  thou  caitiff!  Oh,  thou  varlet!  Oh, 
thou  wicked  Hannibal !  I  respected  with  her,  before  I 
was  married  to  her  ? — If  ever  I  was  respected  with  her, 
or  she  with  me,  let  not  your  worship  think  me  the  poor 
duke's  officer. — Prove  this,  thou  wicked  Hannibal,  or 
I'll  have  mine  action  of  battery  on  thee. 

Escal.  If  he  took  you  a  box  o'  th'  ear,  you  might 
have  your  action  of  slander  too. 


The  manner  in  which,  in  Act  in.  Sc.  2, 
Escalus  designates  and  talks  of  Angelo,  with 
whom  he  was  joined  in  commission  as  Judge, 


MEASUKE   FOR    MEASUKE.  43 

is  so  like  the  manner  in  which  one  English 
Judge  designates  and  talks  of  another,  that  it 
countenances  the  supposition  that  Shake- 
speare may  often,  as  an  attorney's  clerk,  have 
been  in  the  presence  of  English  Judges  : — 

Escal.  Provost  j  my  "brother  Angela  will  not  be  al- 
tered 5  Claudio  must  die  to-morrow.  *'  *  *  If  my 
'brother  wrought  by  my  pity,  it  should  not  be  so  with 
him.  *  *  *  I  have  laboured  for  the  poor  gentle- 
man to  the  extreme st  shore  of  my  modesty ;  but  my 
brother  justice  have  I  found  so  severe,  that  he  hath 
forced  me  to  tell  him,  he  is  indeed — JUSTICE.* 


Even  where  Shakespeare  is  most  solemn 
and  sublime,  his  sentiments  and  language 
seem  sometimes  to  take  a  tinge  from  his  early 
pursuits, — as  may  be  observed  from  a  beauti- 


*  I  am  glad  to  observe  that  our  "  brethren  "  in 
America  adhere  to  the  old  phraseology  of  Westminster 
Hall.  A  Chief  Justice  in  New  England  thus  concludes 
a  very  sound  judgment: — "My  brother  Blannerhasset, 
who  was  present  at  the  argument,  but  is  prevented  by 
business  at  chambers  from  being  here  to-day,  authori- 
ses me  to  say  that  he  has  read  this  judgment,  and  that 
he  entirely  concurs  in  it." 


4:4:    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

ful  passage  in  this  play, — which,  lest  I  should 
be  thought  guilty  of  irreverence,  I  do  not  ven- 
ture to  comment  upon  : — 

Angela.  Your  brother  is  a  forfeit  to  the  law. 

Isabella. Alas  !  alas ! 

Why,  all  the  souls  that  were,  were  forfeit  once  5 
And  He  that  might  the  vantage  best  have  took 
Found  out  the  remedy:  How  would  you  be 
If  He,  which  is  the  top  of  judgment,  should 
But  judge  you  as  you  are  ?     0,  think  on  that ; 
And  mercy  then  will  breathe  within  your  lips, 

Like  man  new  made. 

(Act  n.  Sc.  2.) 


The  following  is  part  of  the  dialogue  be- 
tween Antipholus  of  Syracuse  and  his  man 
Dromio,  in  Act  11.  Sc.  2  : 

Dro.  S.  There's  no  time  for  a  man  to  recover  his 
hair,  that  grows  bald  by  nature. 

Ant.  8.  May  he  not  do  it  by  fine  and  recovery  ? 

Dro.  S.  Yes,  to  pay  &Jine  for  a  periwig,  and  recover 
the  lost  hair  of  another  man. 


THE    COMEDY    OF    EKROJRS.  f  45 

These  jests  cannot  be  supposed  to  arise 
from  anything  in  the  laws  or  customs  of  Syra- 
cuse ;  but  they  show  the  author  to  be  very 
familiar  with  some  of  the  most  abstruse  pro- 
ceedings in  English  jurisprudence. 


In  Act  iv.  Sc.  23  Adriana  asks  Dromio 
of  Syracuse,  "  Where  is  thy  master,  Dromio  ? 
Is  he  well  ?  "  and  Dromio  replies — 

No,  he's  in  Tartar  limbo,  worse  than  hell : 
A  devil  in  an  everlasting  garment  hath  him. 
One  whose  hard  heart  is  button'd  up  with  steel ; 
A  fiend,  a  fairy,  pitiless  and  rough ; 
A  wolf ;  nay  worse,  a  fellow  all  in  buff; 
A  back-friend,  a  shoulder-clapper,  one  that   counter- 
mands 

The  passages  and  alleys,  creeks,  and  narrow  lands : 
A  hound  that  runs  counter,  and  yet  draws  dry-foot 

well; 
One  that  before  the  judgment  carries  poor  souls  to  hell. 

Adr.  Why,  man,  what  is  the  matter  ? 

Dro.  8.  I  do  not  know  the  matter ;  he  is  Crested  on 
the  case. 

Adr.  What,  is  he  arrested  ?  tell  me  at  whose  suit. 


4:6  v  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Dro.  S.  I  know  not  at  whose  suit  he  is  arrested, 

well, 
But  he's  in  a  suit  of  buff  which  'rested  him,  that  can  I 

tell.  *  *  * 

Adr.  *  *  *   This  I  wonder  at : 
That  he,  unknown  to  me,  should  be  in  debt. 
Tell  me,  was  he  arrested  on  a  ~bond  f 

Dro.  S.  Not  on  a  bond,  but  on  a  stronger  thing : 
A  chain,  a  chain  f 

Here  we  have  a  most  circumstantial  and 
graphic  account  of  an  English  arrest  on  mesne 
process  ["before  judgment"],  in  .an  action 
on  the  case,  for  the  price  of  a  gold  chain,  by  a 
sheriff's  officer,  or  bum-bailiff,  in  his  buff  cos- 
tume, and  carrying  his  prisoner  to  a  sponging- 
house — a  spectacle  which  might  often  have 
been  seen  by  an  attorney's  clerk.  A  fellow- 
student  of  mine  (since  an  eminent  Judge), 
being  sent  to  an  attorney's  office,  as  part  of 
his  legal  education,  used  to  accompany  the 
sheriff's  officer  when  making  captions  on 
mesne  process,  that  he  might  enjoy  the  whole 
feast  of  a  law-suit  from  the  egg  to  the  apples 
— and  he  was  fond  of  giving  a  similar  account 
of  this  proceeding, — which  was  then  con- 
stantly occurring,  but  which,  like  "  Trial  by 
Battle/'  may  now  be  considered  obsolete. 


AS   YOU   LIKE   IT.  47 


f  mt 


In  Act  i.  Sc.  2,  Shakespeare  makes  the 
lively  Kosalind,  who,  although,  well  versed  in 
poesy  and  books  of  chivalry,  had  probably 
never  seen  a  bond  or  a  law-pa,per  of  any  sort 
in  her  life,  quite  familiar  with  the  commence- 
ment of  all  deeds  poll,  which  in  Latin  was, 
Noverint  universi  per  presentes,  in  English, 
"Be  it  known  to  all  men  by  these  pres- 
ents:"— l 

Le  Beau.  There  comes  an  old  man  and  his  three 
sons, — 

Gel.  I  could  match  this  beginning  with  an  old  tale. 

Le  Beau.  Three  proper  young  men,  of  excellent 
growth  and  presence ; — 

Eos.  "With  bills  on  their  necks, — "Be  it  known 
unto  all  men  ~by  these+presents" — 

This  is  the  technical  phraseology  referred 
to  by  Thomas  Nash  in  his  '  Epistle  to  the 
Gentlemen  Students  of  the  two  Universities/ 
in  the  year  1589,  when  he  is  supposed  to  have 


48     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

denounced  the  author  of  '  Hamlet '  as  one  of 
those  who  had  "  left  the  trade  of  Noverint, 
whereto  they  were  born,  for  handfuls  of  tragi- 
cal speeches" — that  is,  an  attorney's  clerk 
become  a  poet,  and  penning  a  stanza^  when 
he  should  engross. 

6  As  You  Like  It '  was  not  brought  out 
until  shortly  before  the  year  1600,  so  that 
Nash's  Noverint  could  not  have  been  sug- 
gested by  it.  Possibly  Shakspeare  now  intro- 
duced the  "Be  it  known  unto  all  men/'  &c., 
in  order  to  show  his  contempt  for  Nash's 
sarcasm. 


In  Act.  ii.  Sc.  1,  there  are  illustrations 
which  would  present  themselves  rather  to  the 
mind  of  one  initiated  in  legal  proceedings, 
than  of  one  who  had  been  brought  up  as  an 
apprentice  to  a  glover,  or  an  assistant  to  a 
butcher  or  awoolstapler  : — For  instance,  when 
it  is  said  of  the  poor  wounded  deer,  weeping 
in  the  stream — 


•  thou  mak'st  a  testament 


As  worldlings  do,  giving  thy  sum  of  more 
To  that  which  hath  too  much." 


AS   YOU  LIKE  IT.  49 

And  again  where  the  careless  herd,  jumping 
by  him  without  greeting  him,  are  compared 
to  a  fat  and  greasy  citizens,"  who  look 

"  Upon  that  poor  and  broken  larikrupt  there," — 

without  pitying  his  sufferings  or  attempting 
-to  relieve  his  necessities. 


It  may  perhaps  be  said  that  such  language 
might  be  used  by  any  man  of  observation. 
But  in  Act  115.  Sc.  1,  a  deep  technical  knowl- 
edge of  law  is  displayed,  howsoever  it  may 
have  been  acquired. 

The  usurping  Duke,  Frederick,  wishing 
all  the  real  property  of  Oliver  to  be  seized, 
awards  a  writ  of  extent  against  him,  in  the 
language  which  would  be  used  by  the  Lord 
Chief  Baron  of  the  Court  of  Exchequer — 

Duke  Fred.  Make  an  extent  upon  his  house  and  lands — 

an  extendi  facias  applying  to  house  and 
lands,  as  a  fieri  facias  would  apply  to  goods 
and  chattels,  or  a  capias  ad  satisfaciendum 

to  the  person. 
3 


50    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

So  in  '  King  Henry  VIII /  we  have  an 
equally  accurate  statement  of  the  omnivorous 
nature  of  a  writ  of  PE^MUNIRE.  The  Duke 
of  Suffolk,  addressing  Cardinal  Wolsey, 

says,— 

"  Lord  Cardinal,  the  King's  further  pleasure  is, 
Because  all  those  things  you  have  done  of  late 
By  your  power  legatine  within  this  kingdom 
Fall  into  the  compass  of  a  prcemunire, 
That  therefore  such  a  writ  be  sued  against  you, 
To  forfeit  all  your  goods,  lands,  tenements, 
Chattels,  and  whatsoever,  and  to  "be 
Out  of  the  King's  protection" 


In  the  next  scene  of  '  As  You  Like  It/ 
Shakspeare  shows  that  he  was  well  acquainted 
with  lawyers  themselves  and  the  vicissitudes 
of  their  lives.  Eosalind  having  told  "  who 
Time  ambles  withal,  who  Time  trots  withal, 
who  Time  gallops  withal/'  being  asked, 
"  Who  Time  stands  still  withal  ?  "  answers — 

With  lawyers  in  the  vacation ;  for  they  sleep  between 
term  and  term,  and  then  they  perceive  not  how  Time 
moves. 


AS   YOU   LIKE   IT.  51 

Our  great  poet  had  probably  observed  that 
some  lawyers  have  little  enjoyment  of  the 
vacation  after  a  very  few  weeks,  and  that  they 
again  long  for  the  excitement  of  arguing  de- 
murrers and  pocketing  fees. 


In  the  first  scene  of  Act  iv.  Shakspeare 
gives  us  the  true  legal  meaning  of  the  word 
"  attorney/'  viz.  representative  or  deputy. 
[Celui  qui  vient  a  tour  d'autrui ;  Qui  alterius 
vices  subit ;  Legatus  ;  Vakeel.] 

Eos.  Well,  in  her  person  I  say — I  will  not  have 
you. 

Orl.  Then,  in  my  own  person,  I  die. 

Ros.  No,  faith,  die  ~by  attorney.  The  poor  world  is 
almost  six  thousand  years  old,  and  in  all  this  time 
there  was  not  any  man  died  in  his  own  person,  videlicet, 
in  a  love  cause.* 

*  So  in  c  Eichard  III.,3  Act  iv.  Sc.  4,  the  crook- 
backed  tyrant,  after  murdering  the  infant  sons  of 
Edward  IV.,  audaciously  proposes  to  their  mother  to 
marry  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  their  sister,  and  wishing 
the  queen  to  intercede  with  her  in  his  favour,  says, — 

Be  the  attorney  of  my  love  to  her. 


52    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

I  am  sorry  to  say  that  in  our  time  the 
once  most  respectable  word  "  attorney  "  seem  s 
to  have  gained  a  new  meaning,  viz.  "  a  dis- 
reputable legal  practitioner  ;  "  so  that  attor- 
neys at  law  consider  themselves  treated  dis- 
courteously when  they  are  called  "  Attorneys." 
They  now  all  wish  to  be  called  Solicitors, 
when  doing  the  proper  business  of  attorneys 
in  the  Courts  of  Common  Law.  Most  sin- 
cerely honouring  this  branch  of  our  profession, 
if  it  would  please  them,  I  am  ready  to  sup- 
port a  bill  "  to  prohibit  the  use  of  the  word 
Attorney,  and  to  enact  that  on  all  occasions 
the  word  Solicitor  shall  be  used  instead 
thereof." 

Near  the  end  of  the  same  scene  Shake- 
speare again  evinces  his  love  for  legal  phrase- 
ology and  imagery  by  converting  Time  into 
an  aged  Judge  of  Assize,  sitting  on  the  Crown 
side  : — 


Again  in  the  same  play  (Act  v.  Sc.  3)  Lord  Stanley, 
meeting  Richmond  on  the  field  at  Bos  worth,  says — 

I  by  attorney  bless  thee  from  thy  mother. 


MUCH  ADO  ABOUT  NOTHING.       53 

Eos.  Well,  Time  is  the  old  JUSTICE  that  examines 
all  such  offenders,  and  let  Time  try. 

As  in  f  Troilus  and  Oressida '  (Act  iv.  Sc. 
5)  Shakespeare  makes  Time  an  Arbitrator : — 

"And  that  old  common  AEBITRATOE,  Time, 
Will  one  day  end  it." 


It  has  been  generally  supposed  that  Shake- 
speare, in  the  characters  of  Dogberry  and 
Verges,  only  meant  to  satirize  the  ignorance 
and  folly  of  parish  constables — a  race  with 
which  we  of  this  generation  were  familiar  till 
the  establishment  of  the  metropolitan  and 
rural  police  ;  but  I  cannot  help  suspecting 
that  he  slily  aimed  at  higher  legal  function- 
aries— Chairmen  at  Quarter-sessions,  and  even 
Judges  of  assize, — with  whose  performances 
he  may  probably  have  become  acquainted  at 
Warwick  and  elsewhere. 

There  never  has  been  a  law  or  custom  in 


54:    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

England  to  "give  a  cJiarge"  to  constables; 
but  from  time  immemorial  there  has  been  "  a 
cJiarge  to  grand  juries"  by  the  presiding 
judge.  This  charge,  we  are  bound  to  believe, 
is  now-a-days  always  characterised  by  sim- 
plicity, pertinence,  and  correctness,  although, 
according  to  existing  etiquette,  in  order  that 
it  may  not  be  too  severely  criticised,  the  bar- 
risters are  not  admitted  into  the  Crown  Court 
till  the  charge  is  over.  But  when  Justice 
Shallow  gave  the  charge  to  the  grand  jury  at 
sessions  in  the  county  of  Gloucester,  we  may 
conjecture  that  some  of  his  doctrines  and  di- 
rections were  not  very  wise ;  and  Judges  of 
the  superior  courts  in  former  times  made 
themselves  ridiculous  by  expatiating,  in  their 
charges  to  grand  juries,  on  vexed  questions 
of  manners,  religion,  politics,  and  political 
economy.  Dogberry  uses  the  very  words  of 
the  oath  administered  by  the  Judges'  mar- 
shal to  the  grand  jury  at  the  present  day  : — 

Keep  your  fellows'  counsels  and  your  own. 

(Act  in.  Sc.  3.) 


MUCH  ADO  ABOUT  NOTHING.       55 

If  the  different  parts  of  Dogberry's  charge 
are  strictly  examined,  it  will  "be  found  that 
the  author  of  it  had  a  very  respectable  ac- 
quaintance with  crown  law.  The  problem 
was  to  save  the  constables  from  all  trouble, 
danger,  and  responsibility,  without  any  regard 
to  the  public  safety  : — 

Dogl).  If  you  meet  a  thief,  you  may  suspect  him,  by 
virtue  of  your  office,  to  be  no  true  man ;  and  for  such 
kind  of  men,  the  less  you  meddle  or  make  with  them, 
why,  the  more  is  for  your  honesty. 

2  Watch.  If  we  know  him  to  be  a  thief,  shall  we 
not  lay  hands  on  him  ? 

Dogl.  Truly,  by  your  office  you  may ;  but,  I  think, 
they  that  touch  pitch  will  be  defiled.  The  most  peace- 
able way  for  you,  if  you  do  take  a  thief,  is  to  let  him 
show  himself  what  he  is,  and  steal  out  of  your  company. 

Now  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Lord 
Coke  himself  could  not  more  accurately  have 
denned  the  power  of  a  peace-officer.  - 

I  cannot  say  as  much  for  the  law  laid 
down  by  Dogberry  and  Verges  in  Act  iv. 
Sc.  2,  that  it  was  "flat  perjury "  to  call  a 
prince's  brother  villain  ;  or  "flat  burglary  as 
ever  was  committed "  to  receive  a  thousand 


56    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

ducats  "for  accusing  a  lady  wrongfully/' 
But  the  dramatist  seems  himself  to  have 
been  well  acquainted  with  the  terms  and  dis- 
tinctions of  our  criminal  code,  or  he  could  not 
have  rendered  the  blunders  of  the  parish  of- 
ficers so  absurd  and  laughable. 


's  labour's 


In  Act  i.  Sc.  1,  we  have  an  extract  from 
the  Eeport  by  Don  Adriano  de  Armado  of 
the  infraction  he  had  witnessed  of  the  King's 
proclamation  by  Costard  with  Jaquenetta  ; 
and  it  is  drawn  up  in  the  true  lawyerlike, 
tautological  dialect5 — which  is  to  be  paid  for 
at  so  much  a  folio  : — 

Then  for  the  place  where ;  where,  I  mean,  I  did  en- 
counter that  obscene  and  most  preposterous  event  that 
draweth  from  my  snow-white  pen  the  ebon-coloured 
ink,  which  here  thou  vie  west,  beholdest,  surveyest,  and 
seest.  *  *  *  Him  I  (as  my  ever-esteemed  duty 
pricks  me  on)  have  sent  to  thee  to  receive  the  meed  of 


57 

punishment,  by  thy  sweet  Grace's  officer,  Antony  Dull, 
a  man  of  good  repute,  carriage,  bearing,  and  estimation. 

The  gifted  Shakespeare  might  perhaps 
have  been  capable,  by  intuition,  of  thus  imi- 
tating the  conveyancer's  jargon  ;  but  no  ordi- 
nary man  could  have  hit  it  off  so  exactly, 
without  having  engrossed  in  an  attorney's 
office. 


Egeus  makes  complaint  to  Theseus,  in 
Act  i.  Sc.  1,  against  his  daughter  Hermia, 
because,  while  he  wishes  her  to  marry  Deme- 
trius, she  prefers  Lysander  ;  and  he  seeks  to 
enforce  the  law  of  Athens,  that  a  daughter, 
who  refuses  to  marry  according  to  her  father's 
directions,  may  be  put  to  death  by  him  : — 

And,  my  gracious  duke, 
Be  it  so,  she  will  not  here,  before  your  grace, 
Consent  to  marry  with  Demetrius. 
I  beg  the  ancient  privilege  of  Athens, 


58    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

As  she  is  mine,  I  may  dispose  of  her. 
Which  shall  be  either  to  this  gentleman, 
Or  to  her  death,  according  to  our  law 
Immediately  provided  in  that  case. 

Commenting  on  this  last  line,  Steevens 
observes,  "  Shakespeare  is  grievously  suspect- 
ed of  having  been  placed,  while  a  boy,  in  an 
attorney's  office.  The  line  before  us  has  an 
undoubted  smack  of  legal  commonplace  :  Po- 
etry disclaims  it." 

The  precise  formula — "  In  such  case  made 
and  provided  " — would  not  have  stood  in  the 
verse.  There  is  certainly  no  nearer  approach 
in  heroic  measure  to  the  technical  language 
of  an  indictment ;  and  there  seems  no  motive 
for  the  addition  made  to  the  preceding  line, 
except  to  show  a  familiarity  with  legal  phrase- 
ology, which  Shakespeare,  whether  he  ever 
were  an  attorney's  clerk  or  not,  is  constantly 
fond  of  displaying. 


THE   MEKCHANT   OF   VENICE.  59 


Iftmftant  flf  f  mite. 


In  Act  i.  Sc.  3,  and  Act  n.  Sc.  8,  Anto- 
nio's bond  to  Shylock  is  prepared  and  talked 
about  according  to  all  the  forms  observed  in 
an  English  attorney's  office.  The  distinction 
between  a  "  single  bill  "  and  a  "  bond  with  a 
condition  "  is  clearly  referred  to  ;  and  punc- 
tual payment  is  expressed  in  the  technical 
phrase  —  "  Let  good  Antonio  keep  his  day." 


It  appears  by  Act  in.  Sc.  3,  between  Shy- 
lock,  Salarino,  Antonio,  and  a  Jailer,  that  the 
action  on  the  bond  had  been  commenced,  and 
Antonio  had  been  arrested  on  mesne  process. 
The  trial  was  to  come  on  before  the  Doge  ; 
and  the  question  was,  whether  Shylock  was 
entitled  to  judgment  specifically  for  his  pound 
of  flesh,  or  must  be  contented  with  pecuniary 
damages. 


60    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Shylock  threatens  the  Jailer  with  an  action 
for  ec  escape "  for  allowing  Antonio  to  come 
for  a  short  time  beyond  the  walls  of  the 
prison : — 

I  do  wonder, 

Thou  naughty  Jailer,  that  thou  art  so  fond 
To  come  abroad  with  him  at  his  request. 

Antonio  is  made  to  confess  that  Shylock 
is  entitled  to  the  pound  of  flesh,  according  to 
the  plain  meaning  of  the  bond  and  condition, 
and  the  rigid  strictness  of  the  common  law  of 
England : — 

Salarino.  I  am  sure  the  Duke 

Will  never  grant  this  forfeiture  to  hold. 
Antonio.  The  Duke  cannot  deny  the  course  of  law. 

All  this  has  a  strong  odour  of  Westmin- 
ster Hall. 


The  trial  comes  on  in  Act  iv.  So.  1,  and  it 
is  duly  conducted  according  to  the  strict  forms 
of  legal  procedure.  Portia,  the  PODESTA  or 
judge  called  in  to  act  under  the  authority  of 


THE  MERCHANT   OF  VENICE.  61 

the  Doge,  first  inquires  if  there  be  any  plea  of 
non  estfactum. 

She  asks  Antonio,  "  Do  you  confess  the 
bond  ?  "  and  when  he  answers,  "  I  do/'  the 
judge  proceeds  to  consider  how  the  damages 
are  to  be  assessed.  The  plaintiff  claims  the 
penalty  of  the  bond,  according  to  the  words 
of  the  condition  ;  and  Bassanio,  who  acts  as 
counsel  fbr  the  defendant,  attempting  on 
equitable  grounds  to  have  him  excused  by 
paying  twice  the  sum  of  money  lent,  or  "  ten 
times  o'er,"  judgment  is  given  : — 

Portia.  It  must  not  be.  There  is  no  power  in  Venice 
Can  alter  a  decree  established. 
Twill  be  recorded  for  a  precedent, 
And  many  an  error  by  the  same  example 
Will  rush  into  the  state.    *    *    * 

This  bond  is  forfeit, 

And  lawfully  by  this  the  Jew  may  claim 
A  pound  of  flesh  to  be  by  him  cut  off 
Nearest  the  merchant's  heart. 

However,  oyer  of  the  bond  being  demand- 
ed, the  judge  found  that  it  gave  "  no  jot  of 
blood  ; "  and  the  result  was  that  Shylock,  to 
save  his  own  life,  was  obliged  to  consent  to 


62    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

make  over  all  his  goods  to  his  daughter  Jessi- 
ca and  her  Christian  husband  Lorenzo,  and 
himself  to  submit  to  Christian  baptism. 

Shakespeare  concludes  this  scene  with  an 
ebullition  which  might  be  expected  from  an 
English  lawyer,  by  making  Gratiano  ex- 
claim,— 

In  christening  thou  shalt  have  two  godfathers : 
Had  I  been  judge,  thou  shouldst  have  had  ten  more, 
To  bring  thee  to  the  gallows,  not  the  font-* 

meaning  a  jury  of  twelve  men,  to  find  him 
guilty  of  the  capital  offence  of  an  attempt  to 
murder; — whereupon  he  must  have  been 
hanged. 


I  may  further  observe  that  this  play,  in 
the  last  scene  of  the  last  act,  contains  another 
palpable  allusion  to  English  legal  procedure. 
In  the  court  of  Queen's  Bench,  when  a  com- 
plaint is  made  against  a  person  for  a  "  con- 
tempt" the  practice  is  that  before  sentence  is 
finally  pronounced,  he  is  sent  into  the  Crown 
Office,  and  being  there  "  charged  upon  inter- 


THE  TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.       63 

rogatories,"  he  is  made  to  swear  that  he  will 
"  answer  all  things  faithfully."  Accordingly, 
in  the  moonlight  scene  in  the  garden  at  Bel- 
mont,  after  a  partial  explanation  between 
Bassanio,  Gratiano,  Portia,  and  Nerissa, 
about  their  rings,  some  farther  inquiry  being 
deemed  necessary,  Portia  says, — 

Let  us  go  in. 

And  charge  us  there  upon  inter1  gatories. 
And  we  will  answer  all  things  faithfully. 

Gratiano  assents,  observing, — 

Let  it  be  so :  the  first  inter'gatory 
That  my  Nerissa  shall  be  sworn  on  is. 
Whether  till  the  next  night  she  had  rather  stay, 
Or  go  to  bed  now,  being  two  hours  to  day. 


In  the  "  Induction  "  Shakespeare  betrays 
an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  matters  which 
may  be  prosecuted  as  offences  before  the  Court 
Leet,  the  lowest  court  of  criminal  judicature 


64:    SHAKESPEAEE'S  LEGAL  ACQTJIBEMENTS. 

in  England.  He  puts  this  speech  into  the 
mouth  of  a  servant,  who  is  trying  to  persuade 
Sly  that  he  is  a  great  lord,  and  that  he  had 
been  in  a  dream  for  fifteen  years,  during 
which  time  he  thought  he  was  a  frequenter 
of  alehouses  : — 

For  though  you  lay  here  in  this  goodly  chamber, 
Yet  would  you  say,  ye  were  beaten  out  of  door, 
And  rail  upon  the  hostess  of  the  house, 
And  say  you  would  present  Tier  at  the  leet, 
Because  she  brought  stone  jugs,  and  no  sealed  quarts. 

Now,  in  the  reigns  of  Elizabeth  and  James 
I.,  there  was  a  very  wholesome  law,  that,  for 
the  protection  of  the  public  against  "false 
measures,"  ale  should  be  sold  only  in  sealed 
vessels  of  the  standard  capacity;  and  the  vio- 
lation of  the  law  was  to  be  presented  at  the 
"Court  Leet,"  or  "View  of  Frankpledge," 
held  in  every  hundred,  manor,  or  lordship, 
before  the  steward  of  the  leet. 

Malone,  in  reference  to  this  passage,  cites 
the  well-known  treatise  of '  Kitchen  on  Courts/ 
and  also  copies  a  passage  from  a  work  with 
which  I  am  not  acquainted — '  Characterismi, 
or  Lenton's  Leasures/  12mo.  1631 — which 


THE  TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.       65 

runs  thus  : — "  He  [an  informer]  transforms 
himselfe  into  several  shapes,  to  avoid  suspicion 
of  inneliolderSj  and  inwardly  joyes  at  the  sight 
of  a  blacke  pot  or  jugge,  knowing  that  their 
sale  by  sealed  quarts  spoyles  his  market/' 


In  Act  i.  Sc.  2,  the  proposal  of  Trsfcnio 
that  the  rival  lovers  of  Bianca,  while  they 
eagerly  in  her  presence  should  press  their  suit, 
yet;  when  she  is  absent,  should  converse  freely 
as  friends,  is  illustrated  in  a  manner  to  induce 
a  belief  that  the  author  of  Tranio's  speech  had 
been  accustomed  to  see  the  contending  coun- 
sel, when  the  trial  is  over,  or  suspended, — on 
very  familiar  and  friendly  terms  with  each 
other : — 

Tra.  Sir,  I  shall  not  be  slack :  in  sign  whereof, 
Please  ye,  we  may  contrive  this  afternoon, 
And  quaff  carouses  to  our  mistress'  health ; 
And  do  as  adversaries  do  in  law, 
Strive  mightily,  "but  eat  and  drink  as  friends. 

*  This  clearly  alludes  not   to  the  parties 
litigating,  who,  if  they  were  to  eat  and  drink 


66     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

together,  would  generally  be  disposed  to  poison 
each  other,  but  to  the  counsel  on  opposite 
sides,  with  whom,  notwithstanding  the  fiercest 
contests  in  court,  when  they  meet  in  private 
immediately  after,  it  is  "  All  hail,  fellow,  and 
well  met/' 


In  the  first  encounter  of  wits  between 
Katherine  and  Petmchio,  Shakespeare  shows 
that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  law  for  reg- 
ulating "trials  by  battle"  between  cham- 
pions, one  of  which  had  been  fought  in  Tothill 
Fields  before  the  judges  of  the  Court  of  Com- 
mon Pleas  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 

Katli.  What  is  your  crest  ?  a  coxcomb  ? 
Pet.  A  combless  cock,  so  Kate  will  be  my  hen. 
Kath.  No  cock  of  mine :  you  crow  too  like  a  tfrcwen. 

(Act  ii.  Sc.  1.) 

This  all  lawyers  know  to  be  the  word 
spoken  by  a  chaaapion  who  acknowledged  that 
he  was  beaten,  and  declared  that  he  would 
fight  no  more : — whereupon  judgment  was 
immediately  given  against  the  side  which  he 


ALL'S    WELL   THAT   ENDS    WELL.  67 

supported,  and  lie  bore  the  infamous  name  of 
Craven  for  the  rest  of  his  days. 

We  have  like  evidence  in  '  Hamlet  *  (Act 
iv.  Sc.  4)  of  Shakespeare's  acquaintance  with 
the  legal  meaning  of  this  word,  where  the  hero 
says — 

Now,  whether  it  be 

Bestial  oblivion,  or  some  craven  scruple 
Of  thinking  too  precisely  on  th'  event. 


tttai 


In  this  play  we  meet  with  proof  that 
Shakespeare  had  an  accurate  knowledge  of 
the  law  of  England  respecting  the  incidents 
of  military  tenure,  or  tenure  in  cliivalry,  by 
which  the  greatest  part  of  the  land  in  this 
kingdom  was  held  till  the  reign  of  Charles  II. 
The  incidents  of  that  tenure  here  dwelt  upon 
are  "wardship  of  minors"  and  "the  right 
of  the  guardian  to  dispose  of  the  minor  in 
marriage  at  his  pleasure."  The  scene  lies  in 


68    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

France,  and,  strictly  speaking,  the  law  of  that 
country  ought  to  prevail  in  settling  such  ques- 
tions :  but  Dr.  Johnson,  in  his  notes  on  '  All's 
Well  that  Ends  Well/  justly  intimates  his 
opinion  that  it  is  of  no  great  use  to  inquire 
whether  the  law  upon  these  subjects  was  the 
same  in  France  as  in  England,  "  for  Shake- 
speare gives  to  all  nations  the  manners  of 
England/' 

According  to  the  plot  on  which  this  play 
is  constructed,  the  French  King  laboured 
under  a  malady  which  his  physicians  had 
declared  incurable;  and  Helena,  the  daughter 
of  a  deceased  physician  of  great  eminence, 
knew  of  a  cure  for  it.  She  was  in  love  with 
Bertram,  Count  of  Eousillon,  still  a  minor, 
who  held  large  possessions  as  tenant  in  capite 
under  the  crown,  and  was  in  ward  to  the 
King.  Helena  undertook  the  cure,  making 
this  condition : — 

Eel.  Then  shalt  thou  give  me  with  thy  kingly  hand 
What  husband  in  thy  power  I  will  command. 

Adding,  however : — 


69 


Exempted  be  from  me  the  arrogance 

To  choose  from  forth  the  royal  blood  of  France   *  *   * 

But  such  a  one,  thy  vassal,  whom  I  know 

Is  free  for  me  to  ask,  thee  to  bestow.     (Act  n.  Sc.  1.) 

She  effects  the  cure,  and  the  King,  show- 
ing her  all  the  noble  unmarried  youths  whom 
he  then  held  as  wards,  says  to  her — 

Fair  maid,  send  forth  thine  eye :  this  youthful  parcel 
Of  noble  bachelors  stand  at  my  bestowing    *    *    * 

thy  frank  election  make : 

Thou  hast  power  to  choose,  and  they  none  to  forsake. 

(Act  n.  Sc.  3.) 

Helena,  after  excusing  herself  to  several 
of  the  others,  comes  to  Bertram,  and,  covered 
with  blushes,  declares  her  election  : — 

Hel.  I  dare  not  say  I  take  you ;  but  I  give 
Me  and  my  service,  ever  whilst  I  live, 
Into  your  guiding  power. — This  is  the  man. 

King.  Why  then,  young  Bertram,  take  her :  she's 
thy  wife. 

Bertram  at  first  strenuously  refuses,  say- 
ing— 

In  such  a  business  give  me  leave  to  use 
The  help  of  mine  own  eyes. 


70     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

But  the  King,  after  much,  discussion,  thus 
addresses  him : — 

It  is  in  us  to  plant  thine  honour  where 

We  please  to  have  it  grow.     Check  thy  contempt. 

Obey  our  will,  which  travails  in  thy  good. '   *    *    *    * 

Take  her  by  the  hand, 

And  tell  her  she  is  thine.     *    *    * 

Bert.  I  take  her  hand.     (Act  n.  Sc.  3.) 

The  ceremony  of  marriage  was  immedi- 
ately performed,  and  no  penalty  or  forfeiture 
was  incurred.  But  the  law  not  extending  to 
a  compulsion  upon  the  ward  to  live  with  the 
wife  thus  forced  upon  him,  Bertram  escapes 
from  the  church  door,  and  abandoning  his 
wife,  makes  off  for  the  wars  in  Italy,  where 
he  unconsciously  embraced  the  deserted  Hel- 
ena. 

For  the  cure  of  the  King  by  the  physi- 
cian's daughter,  and  her  being  deserted  by 
her  husband,  Shakespeare  is  indebted  to  Boc- 
caccio ;  but  the  wardship  of  Bertram,  and 
the  obligation  of  the  ward  to  take  the  wife 
provided  for  him  by  his  guardian,  Shakespeare 
drew  from  his  own  knowledge  of  the  common 
law  of  England,  which,  though  now  obsolete, 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE.  71 

was  in  full  force  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  and 
was  to  be  found  in  Littleton.*  The  adven- 
ture of  Parolles's  drum  and  the  other  comic 
parts  of  the  drama  are  quite  original,  and 
these  he  drew  from  his  own  inexhaustible 
fancy. 


In  this  play,  Act  i.  Sc.  2,  there  is  an  al- 
lusion to  a  piece  of  English  law  procedure, 
which,  although  it  might  have  been  enforced 
till  very  recently,  could  hardly  be  known  to 
any  except  lawyers,  or  those  who  had  them- 
selves actually  been  in  prison  on  a  criminal 
charge, — that,  whether  guilty  or  innocent,  the 
prisoner  was  liable  to  pay  a  fee  on  his  libera- 


*  However,  according  to  Littleton,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  Bertram,  without  being  liable  to  any  penalty 
or  forfeiture,  might  not  have  refused  to  marry  Helena, 
— on  the  ground  that  she  was  not  of  noble  descent. 
The  lord  could  not  "  disparage JJ  the  ward  by  a  mesalr 
liance.—Co.  Litt.  80a. 


72    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

tion.  Hermione,  trying  to  persuade  Polixenes, 
King  of  Bohemia,  to  prolong  his  stay  at  the 
court  of  Leontes  in  Sicily,  says  to  him — 

You  put  me  off  with  limber  vows ;  but  I, 

Though  you  would  seek  t'  unsphere  the  stars  with  oaths, 

Should  yet  say,  "  Sir,  no  going."    *    *    * 

Force  me  to  keep  you  as  a  prisoner, 

Not  like  a  guest ;  so  you  shall  pay  your  fees 

When  you  depart,  and  save  your  thanks. 

I  remember  when  the  Clerk  of  Assize  and 
the  Clerk  of  the  Peace  were  entitled  to  exact 
their  fee  from  all  acquitted  prisoners,  and 
were  supposed  in  strictness  to  have  a  lien  on 
their  persons  for  it.  I  believe  there  is  now  no 
tribunal  in  England  where  the  practice  re- 
mains, excepting  the  two  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment ;  but  the  Lord  Chancellor  and  .the 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons  still  say 
to  prisoners  about  to  be  liberated  from  the 
custody  of  the  Black  Kod  or  the  Serjeant-at- 
Arms,  "  You  are  discharged,  paying  your 
fees.3' 


When  the  trial  of  Queen  Hermione  for 
high  treason  comes  off  in  Act  m.  Sc.  2,  al- 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE.  73 

though,  the  indictment  is  not  altogether  ac- 
cording to  English  legal  form,  and  might  be 
held  insufficient  on  a  writ  of  error,  we  lawyers 
cannot  but  wonder  at  seeing  it  so  near  perfec- 
tion in  charging  the  treason,  and  alleging  the 
overt  act  committed  by  her  "  contrary  to  the 
faith  and  allegiance  of  a  true  subject." 

It  is  likewise  remarkable  that  Cleomenes 
and  Dion,  the  messengers  who  brought  back 
the  response  from  the  oracle  of  Delphi,  to  be 
given  in  evidence,  are  sworn  to  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  document  they  produce  almost  in 
the  very  words  now  used  by  the  Lord  Chan- 
cellor when  an  officer  presents  at  the  bar  of 
the  House  of  Lords  the  copy  of  a  record  of  a 
court  of  justice  : — 

You  here  shall  swear    *    *    * 

That  you,  Cleomenes  and  Dion,  have 

Been  both  at  Delphos  j  and  from  thence  have  brought 

The  seal'd-up  oracle,  by  the  hand  delivered 

Of  great  Apollo's  priest ;  and  that  since  then 

You  have  not  dar'd  to  break  the  holy  seal, 

Kor  read  the  secrets  in  't. 


SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 


htjg  Jatai. 


In  Shakespeare's  dramas  founded  upon 
English  history,  more  legalisms  might  have 
been  expected  ;  but  I  have  met  with  fewer 
than  in  those  which  are  taken  from  the  annals 
of  foreign  nations,  or  which,  without  depend- 
ing on  locality,  "  hold  the  mirror  up  to  na- 
ture." This  paucity  of  reference  to  law  or 
to  law  proceedings  may,  perhaps,  in  part  be 
accounted  for  by  the  fact  that,  in  these 
"  Histories,"  as  they  are  called,  our  great 
dramatist  is  known  to  have  worked  upon 
foundations  already  laid  by  other  men  who 
had  no  technical  knowledge,  and  in  several 
instances  he  appears  only  to  have  introduced 
additions  and  improvements  into  stock  pieces 
to  revive  their  popularity.  Yet  we  find  in 
several  of  the  "Histories,"  Shakespeare's 
fondness  for  law  terms  ;  and  it  is  still  re- 
markable, that  whenever  he  indulges  this 
propensity  he  uniformly  lays  down  good 
law. 


KING  JOHN.  75 

Thus  in  the  controversy,  in  the  opening 
scene  of  'KiNG  JOHN/  between  Robert  and 
Philip  Faulconbridge,  as  to  which  of  them 
was  to  be  considered  the  true  heir  of  the  de- 
ceased Sir  Kobert,  the  King,  in  giving  judg- 
ment, lays  down  the  law  of  legitimacy  most 
perspicuously  and  soundly, — thus  addressing 
Kobert,  the  plaintiff : — 

"  Sirrah,  your  brother  is  legitimate : 
Your  father's  wife  did  after  wedlock  bear  him ; 
And  if  she  did  play  false,  the  fraud  was  hers, 
Which  fault  lies  on  the  hazards  of  all  husbands 
That  marry  wives.     Tell  me,  how  if  my  brother, 
"Who,  as  you  say,  took  pains  to  get  this  son, 
Had  of  your  father  claim'd  this  son  for  his  ? 
In  sooth,  good  friend,  your  father  might  have  kept 
This  calf,  bred  from  his  cow,  from  all  the  world : 
In  sooth,  he  might :  then,  if  he  were  my  brother's, 
My  brother  might  not  claim  him,  nor  your  father, 
Being  none  of  his,  refuse  him.     This  concludes — 
My  mother's  son  did  get  your  father's  heir ; 
Your  father's  heir  must  have  your  father's  land." 

This  is  the  true  doctrine,  "Pater  est 
quern  nuptiw  demonstrant." 

It  was  likewise  properly  ruled  that  the 
father's  will,  in  favour  of  his  son  Robert,  had 


7C    SHAKESPEAEE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

no  power  to  dispossess  the  right  heir.  Philip 
might  have  recovered  the  land,  if  he  had  not 
preferred  the  offer  made  to  him  by  his  grand- 
mother, Elinor,  the  Queen  Dowager,  of  taking 
the  name  of  Plantagenet,  and  feeing  dubbed 
Sir  Eichard. 


In  Act  ii.  Sc.  1,  we  encounter  a  metaphor 
which  is  purely  legal,  yet  might  come  nat- 
urally from  an  attorney's  clerk,  who  had  often 
been  an  attesting  witness  to  the  execution  of 
deeds.  The  Duke  of  Austria,  having  entered 
into  an  engagement  to  support  Arthur  against 
his  unnatural  uncle,  till  the  young  prince 
should  be  put  in  possession  of  the  dominions 
in  France  to  which  he  was  entitled  as  the 
true  heir  of  the  Plantagenets,  and  should  be 
crowned  King  of  England,  says,  kissing  the 
boy  to  render  the  covenant  more  binding, 

"  Upon  thy  check  I  lay  this  zealous  kiss, 
As  seal  to  this  indenture  of  my  love." 


KING  JOHN.  77 

In  a  subsequent  part  of  this  play,  the  true 
ancient  doctrine  of  "the  supremacy  of  the 
crown"  is  laid  down  with  great  spirit  and 
force  :  and  Shakespeare  clearly  shows  that, 
whatever  his  opinion  might  have  been  on 
speculative  dogmas  in  controversy  between 
the  Keformers  and  the  Bomanists,  he  spurned 
the  ultramontane  pretensions  of  the  Pope, 
which  some  of  our  Koman  Catholic  fellow 
subjects  are  now  too  much  disposed  to  coun- 
tenance, although  they  were  stoutly  resisted 
before  the  Reformation  by  our  ancestors,  who 
were  good  Catholics.  King  John  declares, 
Act  in.  Sc.  1, 

"  No  Italian  priest 
Shall  tithe  or  toll  in  our  dominions ; 
But  as  we  under  heaven  are  supreme  head, 
So,  under  heaven,  that  great  supremacy. 
Where  we  do  reign,  we  will  alone  uphold, 
Without  th'  assistance  of  a  mortal  hand. 
So  tell  the  Pope ;  all  reverence  set  apart 
To  him  and  his  usurp'd  authority. 
King  Philip.  Brother  of  England,  you  blaspheme 

in  this. 

King  John.  Though  you  and  all  the  kings  of  Chris- 
tendom 


78-    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Are  led  so  grossly  by  this  meddling  priest. 

Dreading  the  curse  that  money  may  buy  out, 

And  by  the  merit  of  vile  gold,  dross,  dust, 

Purchase  corrupted  pardon  of  a  man, 

Who  in  that  sale  sells  pardon  from  himself, — 

Though  you  and  all  the  rest,  so  grossly  led, 

This  juggling  witchcraft  with  revenue  cherish, 

Yet  I  alone,  alone  do  me  oppose 

Against  the  Pope,  and  count  his  friends  my  foes." 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  clear,  from  Shake- 
speare's portraiture  of  Friar  Lawrence  and 
other  Eoman  Catholic  ecclesiastics,  who  do 
honour  to  their  church,  that  he  was  no  bigot, 
and  that  he  regarded  with  veneration  all  who 
seek  to  imitate  the  meek  example  of  the 
divine  founder  of  the  Christian  religion. 


PART  I. 

.  In  Act  in.  Sc.  1,  we  have  the  partition 
of  England  and  Wales  between  Mortimer, 
Glendower,  and  Hotspur,  and  the  business  is 


KING   HENRY   THE   FOUKTH.  79 

conducted  in  as  clerk-like,  attorn  ey-like  fash- 
ion, as  if  it  had  been  the  partition  of  a  manor 
between  joint  tenants,  tenants  in  common,  or 
coparceners. 

Glend.  Come,  here's  the  map  ;  shall  we  divide  our 

right, 
According  to  our  three-fold  order  ta'en  ? 

Mort.  The  archdeacon  hath  divided  it 
Into  three  limits  very  equally. 
England,  from  Trent  and  Severn  hitherto, 
By  south  and  east  is  to  my  part  assign'd : 
And  westward,  Wales,  beyond  the  Severn  shore : . 
And  all  the  fertile  land  within  that  bound, 
To  Owen  Glendower: — and,  dear  Coz,  to  you, 
The  remnant  northward,  lying  off  from  Trent ; 
And  our  indentures  tripartite  are  drawn, 
Which  leing  sealed  interchangeably, 
(A  business  that  this  night  may  execute,) 
To-morrow,  cousin  Percy,  you  and  I, 
And  my  good  Lord  of  "Worcester,  will  set  forth. 

It  may  well  be  imagined,  that  in  compos- 
ing this  speech  Shakespeare  was  recollecting 
how  he  had  seen  a  deed  of  partition  tripartite 
drawn  and  executed  in  his  master's  office  at 
Stratford. 

Afterwards,  in  the  same  scene,  he  repre- 


80    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

sents  that  the  unlearned  Hotspur,  who  had 
such  an  antipathy  to  "metre  ballad-mongers" 
and  "  mincing  poetry/'  fully  understood  this 
conveyancing  proceeding,  and  makes  him  ask 
impatiently, 

"  Are  the  indentures  drawn  f  shall  we  be  gone  ?" 

Shakespeare  may  have  been  taught  that 
"  livery  of  seisin  "  was  not  necessary  to  a  deed 
of  partition,  or  he  would  probably  have  direct- 
ed this  ceremony  to  complete  the  title. 


So  fond  was  he  of  law  terms,  that  after- 
wards, when  Henry  IV.  is  made  to  lecture  the 
Prince  of  Wales  on  his  irregularities,  and  to 
liken  him  to  Eichard  II.,  who,  by  such  im- 
proper conduct,  lost  the  crown,  he  uses  the 
forced  and  harsh  figure,  that  Kichard 

"Enfeoffed  himself  to  popularity"  (Act  in.  Sc.  2). 

I  copy  Malone's  note  of  explanation  on  this 
line  : — "  Gave  himself  up  absolutely  to  popu- 
larity. A  feoffment  was  the  ancient  mode  of 


KING   IIENKY   THE   FOURTH.  81 

conveyance,  by  which  all  lands  in  England 
were  granted  in  fee-simple  for  several  ages, 
till  the  conveyance  of  lease  and  release  was 
invented  by  Serjeant  Moor  about  the  year 
1630.  Every  deed  of  feoffment  was  accom- 
panied with  livery  of  seisin,  that  is,  with  the 
delivery  of  corporal  possession  of  the  land  or 
tenement  granted  in  fee." 


To  "  sue  out  /livery  "  is  another  law  term 
used  in  this  play  (Act  iv.  Sc.  3,) — a  proceed- 
ing to  be  taken  by  a  ward  of  the  crown,  on 
coming  of  age,  to  obtain  possession  of  his 
lands,  which  the  king  had  held  as  guardian  in 
chivalry  during  his  minority.  Hotspur,  in 
giving  a  description  of  Henry  the  Fourth's 
beggarly  and  suppliant  condition  when  he 
landed  at  Eavenspurg,  till  assisted  by  the 
Percys,  says, 

u  And  when  he  was  not  six-and-twenty  strong. 
Sick  in  the  world's  regard,  wretched  and  low, 
A  poor  unminded  outlaw,  sneaking  home, 
My  father  gave  him  welcome  to  the  shore : 
4* 


82    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

And  when  he  heard  him  swear,  and  vow  to  God, 
He  came  but  to  be  Duke  of  Lancaster, 
To  sue  Ms  livery ',  and  beg  his^peace, 
With  tears  of  innocency  and  terms  of  zeal, 
My  father,  in  kind  heart  and  pity  mov'd, 
Swore  him  assistance." 


tfa 

PART  II. 


Arguments  have  been  drawn  from  this 
drama  against  Shakespeare's  supposed  great 
legal  acquirements.  It  has  been  objected  to 
the  very  amusing  interview,  in  Act  i.  Sc.  2, 
between  Falstaff  and  the  Lord  Chief  Justice, 
that  if  Shakespeare  had  been  much  of  a  law- 
yer, he  would  have  known  that  this  great 
magistrate  could  not  examine  offenders  in  the 
manner  supposed,  and  could  only  take  notice 
of  offences  when  they  were  regularly  prosecu- 
ted before  him  in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench, 
or  at  the  assizes.  But  although  such  is  the 
practice  in  our  days,  so  recently  as  the  be- 


KING   IIENKY   THE   FOURTH.  83 

ginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  that  illus- 
trious Judge,  Lord  Chief  Justice  Holt,  acted 
as  a  police  magistrate,  quelling  riots,  taking 
depositions  against  parties  accused,  and, 
where  a  prima  facie  case  was  made  out 
against  them,  committing  them  for  trial. 
Lord  Chief  Justice  Coke  actually  assisted  in 
taking  the  Earl  and  Countess  of  Somerset  in- 
to custody  when  charged  with  the  murder  of 
Sir  Thomas  Overbury,  and  examined  not  less 
than  three  hundred  witnesses  against  them, — 
writing  the  depositions  with  his  own  hand. 
It  was  quite  in  course  that  those  charged  with 
the  robbery  at  G-adshill  should  be  "had  up" 
before  Lord  Chief  Justice  Gascoigne,  and  that 
he  should  take  notice  of  any  of  them  who, 
having  disobeyed  a  summons  to  appear  before 
him,  happened  to  come  casually  into  his  pres- 
ence. 

His  Lordship  is  here  attended  by  the  tip- 
staif  (or  orderly),  who,  down  to  the  present 
day,  follows  the  Chief  Justice,  like  his  shadow, 
wherever  he  officially  appears.  On  this  occa- 
sion the  Chief  Justice  meeting  Sir  John,  natu- 
rally taxes  him  with  having  refused  to  obey 


84:    SIIAKESPEAJRE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

the  summons  served  upon  him  to  attend  at 
his  Lordship's  chambers,  that  he  might  an- 
swer the  information  laid  against  him ;  and 
Sir  John  tries  to  excuse  himself  by  saying 
that  he  was  then  advised  by  his  "counsel 
learned  in  the  laws,"  that,  as  he  was  march- 
ing to  Shrewsbury  by  the  king's  orders,  he 
was  not  bound  to  come. 

Again,  it  is  objected  that  a  Chief  Justice 
could  not  be  supposed,  by  any  person  ac- 
quainted with  his  station  and  functions,  to 
use  such  vulgar  language  as  that  put  into  the 
mouth  of  Sir  William  Gascoigne  when  Fal- 
staff  will  not  listen  to  him,  and  that  this  rath- 
er smacks  of  the  butcher's  shop  in  which  it  is 
alleged  that  young  Shakespeare  employed 
himself  in  killing  calves. 

CTi.  Just.  To  punish  you  by  the  heels  would  amend 
the  attention  of  your  ears  ;  and  I  care  not  if  I  do  become 
your  physician. 

But  to  "lay  by  the  heels  "  was  the  tech- 
nical expression  for  committing  to  prison,  and 
i  could  produce  from  the  Keports  various 
instances  of  its  being  so  used  by  distinguished 


KINO   HENRY  THE   FOURTH.  85 

judges  from  the  bench.  I  will  content  my- 
self with  one.  A  petition  being  heard  in  the 
Court  of  Chancery,  before  Lord  Chancellor 
Jeffreys,  against  a  great  City  attorney  who 
had  given  him  many  briefs  at  the  bar, 
an  affidavit  was  read,  shearing  that  when 
the  attorney  was  threatened  with  being 
brought  before  my  Lord  Chancellor,  he  ex- 
claimed— "  My  Lord  Chancellor  !  I  made 
him  !  "  Lord  Chancellor  Jeffreys  : — "  Then 
will  I  lay  my  MAKER  by  the  heels.'9  A  war- 
rant of  commitment  was  instantly  signed  and 
sealed  by  the  Lord  Chancellor,  and  the  poor 
attorney  was  sent  off  to  the  Fleet. 

I  must  confess  that  I  am  rather  mortified 
by  the  advantage  given  to  the  fat  knight  over 
my  predecessor  in  this  encounter  of  their 
wits.  Sir  John  professes  to  treat  the  Chief 
Justice  with  profound  reverence,  interlarding 
his  sentences  plentifully  with  jour  Lordship 
— "God  give  your  Lordship  good  time  of 
day  :  I  am  glad  to  see  your  Lordship  abroad  : 
I  heard  say  your  Lordship  was  sick  :  I  hope 
your  Lordship  goes  abroad  by  advice.  Your 
Lordship,  though  not  clean  past  your  youth, 


86     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

hath  yet  some  smack  of  age  in  you,  some 
relish  of  the  saltness  of  time  ;  and  I  most 
humbly  beseech  your  Lordship  to  have  a 
reverend  care  of  your  health/'  Yet  FalstafFs 
object  is  to  turn  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  into 
ridicule,  and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  he  splen- 
didly succeeds, — insomuch  that  after  the 
party  accused  of  felony  has  vaingloriously 
asserted  that  he  himself  had  done  great  ser- 
vice to  the  state,  and  that  his  name  was 
terrible  to  the  enemy,  the  Chief  Justice, 
instead  of  committing  him  to  Newgate  to 
answer  for  the  robbery  at  Gadshill,  is  con- 
tented with  admonishing  him  to  be  honest, 
and  dismisses  him  with  a  blessing ; — upon 
which  Sir  John  is  emboldened  to  ask  the 
Chief  Justice  for  the  loan  of  a  thousand 
pounds.  To  lower  the  law  still  further,  my 
Lord  Chief  Justice  is  made  to  break  off  the 
conversation,  in  which  FalstafPs  wit  is  so 
sparkling,  with  a  very  bad  pun. 

Ch.  Just.  Not  a  penny,  not  a  penny:  you  are  too 
impatient  to  bear  crosses.* 

*  So  bad  is  this  pun  that  perhaps  it  may  not  be 


KIKG   HENRY   THE   FOURTH.  87 

The  same  superiority  is  preserved  in  the 
subsequent  scene  (Act  n.  Sc.  1),  where  Fal- 
staff  being  arrested  on  mesrxe  process  for  debt 
at  the  suit  of  Dame  Quickly,  he  gains  his 
discharge,  with  the  consent  of  the  Chief 
Justice,  by  saying  to  his  Lordship — "  My 
Lord,  this  is  a  poor  mad  soul ;  and  she  says, 
up  and  down  the  town,  that  her  eldest  son  is 
like  you  : "  and  by  insisting  that  although 
he  owed  the  money,  he  was  privileged  from 
arrest  for  debt/'  being  upon  hasty  employment 
in  the  king's  affairs." 


In  Act  v.  Sc.  1,  Falstaff,  having  long 
made  Justice  Shallow  his  butt  during  a  visit 
to  him  in  Gloucestershire,  looks  forward  with 
great  delight  to  the  fun  of  recapitulating  at 
the  Boar's  Head,  East  Cheap,  Shallow's  ab- 
surdities ;  and,  meaning  to  intimate  that  this 
would  afford  him  opportunities  of  amusing 


useless  to  remind  you  that  the  penny  and  all  the  royal 
coins  then  had  impressed  upon  them  the  sign  of  the 
erase. 


88    SUAKESPEAKE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

the  Prince  of  Wales  for  a  twelvemonth,  he 

says — 

"I  will  devise  matter  enough  out  of  this  Shallow  to 
keep  Prince  Henry  in  continual  laughter  the  wearing 
out  of  six  fashions  (which  is  four  terms,  or  two  actions), 
and  he  shall  laugh  without  intervallums." 

Dr.  Johnson  thus  annotates  on  the  "  two 
actions  : — "  There  is  something  humorous  in 
making  a  spendthrift  compute  time  by  the 
operation  of  an  action  for  debt."  The  critic 
supposes,  therefore,  that  in  Shakespeare's 
time  final  judgment  was  obtained  in  an  action 
of  debt  in  the  second  term  after  the  writ  com- 
mencing it  was  sued  out ;  and  as  there  are 
four  terms  in  the  legal  year, — Michaelmas 
Term,  Hilary  Term,  Easter  Term,  and  Trinity 
Term — this  is  a  legal  circumlocution  for  a 
twelvemonth.  It  would  seem  that  the  author 
who  dealt  in  such  phraseology  must  have 
been  early  initiated  in  the  mysteries  of  terms 
and  actions. 


Shakespeare  has  likewise  been  blamed  for 
an  extravagant  perversion  of  law  in  the  prom- 


KING   HENRY    THE   FOUETH.  89 

ises  and  threats  which.  Falstaff  throws  out 
on  hearing  that  Henry  IV.  was  dead,  and 
that  Prince  Hal  reigned  in  his  stead. 

Fal.  Master  Robert  Shallow,  choose  what  office 
thou  wilt  in  the  land,  'tis  thine. — Pistol,  I  will  double 
charge  thee  with  dignities.  *  *  *  Master  Shallow, 
my  Lord  Shallow,  be  what  thou  wilt,  I  am  Fortune's 
steward.  *  *  *  Come,  Pistol,  utter  more  to  me ; 
and  withal  devise  something  to  do  thyself  good. — Boot, 
boot,  master  Shallow :  I  know  the  young  King  is  sick 
for  me.  Let  us  take  any  man's  horses ;  the  laws  of 
England  are  at  my  commandment.  Happy  are  they 
which  have  been  my  friends,  and  woe  unto  my  Lord 
Chief  Justice  ! — Act  v.  Sc.  4. 

But  Falstaff  may  not  unreasonably  be 
supposed  to  have  believed  that  he  could  do 
all  this,  even  if  he  were  strictly  kept  to  the 
literal  meaning  of  his  words.  In  the  natural 
and  usual  course  of  things  he  was  to  become 
(as  it  was  then  called)  "  favourite "  (or,  as 
we  call  it,  Prime  Minister)  to  the  new  king, 
and  to  have  all  the  power  and  patronage  of 
the  crown  in  his  hands.  Then,  why  plight 
not  Ancient  Pistol,  who  had  seen  service, 
have  been  made  War  Minister  ?  And  if 
Justice  Shallow  had  been  pitchforked  into  the 


90     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

House  of  Peers,  lie  might  have  turned  out  a 
distinguished  Law  Lord. — By  taking  "  any 
man's  horses  "  was  not  meant  stealing  them, 
but  pressing  them  for  the  king's  service,  or 
appropriating  them  at  a  nominal  price,  which 
the  law  would  then  have  justified  under  the 
king's  prerogative  of  pre-emption.  Sir  W. 
G-ascoigne  was  continued  as  Lord  Chief  Jus- 
tice in  the  new  reign  ;  but,  according  to  law 
and  custom,  he  was  removable,  a-nd  he  no 
doubt  expected  to  be  removed,  from  his  office. 
Therefore,  if  Lord  Eldon  could  be  supposed 
to  have  written  the  play,  I  do  not  see  how  he 
would  be  chargeable  with  having  forgotten 
any  of  his  law  while  writing  it. 


It  is  remarkable  that  while  Falstaff  and 
his  companions,  in  Act  v.  Sc.  5,  are  standing 
in  Palace  Yard  to  see  the  new  king  returning 
from  his  coronation  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
Pistol  is  made  to  utter  an  expression  used, 
when  the  record  was  in  Latin,  by  special 
pleaders  in  introducing  a  special  traverse  or 
negation  of  a  positive  material  allegation  of 


KING  HENRY   THE   SIXTH. — PART   II.          91 

the  opposite  side,  and  so  framing  an  issue  of 
fact  for  the  determination  of  the  jury ; — absque 
hoc,  "  without  this  that ; " — then  repeating 
the  allegation  to  be  negatived.  But  there  is 
often  much  difficulty  in  explaining  or  account- 
ing for  the  phraseology  of  Ancient  Pistol,  who 
appears  "to  have  been  at  a  great  feast  of 
languages  and  stolen  the  scraps  ; " — so  that 
if,  when  "  double  charged  with  dignities/'  he 
had  been  called  upon  to  speak  in  debate  as  a 
leading  member  of  the  government,  his  ap- 
pointment might  have  been  carped  at. 


enrg  ik 

PABT  II. 


In  the  speeches  of  Jack  Cade  and  his  co- 
adjutors in  this  play  we  find  a  familiarity 
with  the  law  and  its  proceedings  which 
strongly  indicates  that  the  author  must  have 

had  some  professional   practice  or  education 
4* 


92     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

as  a  lawyer.     The  second  scene  in  Act  iv. 
may  be  taken  as  an  example. 

Dick.  The  first  thing  we  do,  leVs  kill  all  the  lawyers. 

Cade.  Nay,  that  I  mean  to  do.  Is  not  this  a  lam- 
entable thing,  that  the  skin  of  an  innocent  lamb  should 
be  made  parchment  ? — that  parchment,  being  scribbled 
o'er,  should  undo  a  man  ?  Some  say  the  bee  stings ; 
but  I  say  'tis  the  bee's  wax,  for  I  did  but  seal  once  to  a 
thing,  and  I  was  never  mine  own  man  since. 

The  Clerk  of  Chatham  is  then  brought  in, 
who  could  "  make  obligations  and  write  court 
hand/'  and  who,  instead  of  "  making  his  mark 
like  an  honest  plain-dealing  man/'  had ,  been 
"  so  well  brought  up  that  he  could  write  his 
name."  Therefore  he  was  sentenced  to  be 
hanged  with  his  pen  and  ink-horn  about  his 
neck. 

Surely  Shakespeare  must  have  been  em- 
ployed to  write  deeds  on  parchment  in  court 
hand,  and  to  apply  the  wax  to  them  in  the 
form  of  seals  :  one  does  not  understand  how 
he  should,  on  any  other  theory  of  his  bringing 
up,  have  been  acquainted  with  these  details. 


KING   HENRY   THE    SIXTH. PAET   11.          93 

Again,  the  indictment  on  which.  Lord  Say 
was  arraigned,  in  Act  iv.  Sc.  7,  seems  drawn 
by  no  inexperienced  hand  : — 

"  Thou  hast  most  traitorously  corrupted  the  youth 
of  the  realm  in  erecting  a  grammar-school :  and  where- 
as, before,  our  forefathers  had  no  other  books  but  the 
score  and  the  tally,  thou  hast  caused  printing  to  be 
used ;  and  contrary  to  the  Hug,  Ms  crown  and  dignity, 
thou  hast  built  a  paper-mill.  It  will  be  proved  to  thy 
face  that  thou  hast  men  about  thee  that  usually  talk  of 
a  noun  and  a  verb,  and  such  abominable  words  as  no 
CJiristian  ear  can  endure  to  hear.*  Thou  hast  appointed 
justices  of  peace,  to  call  poor  men  before  them  about 
matters  they  were  not  able  to  answer.  Moreover  thou 
hast  put  them  in  prison ;  and  because  they  could  not 
read,  thou  hast  hanged  them,  when  indeed  only  for  that 
cause  they  have  been  most  worthy  to  live." 

How  acquired  I  know  not,  but  it  is  quite 
certain  that  the  drawer  of  this  indictment 
must  have  had  some  acquaintance  with  '  The 
Crown  Circuit  Companion/  and  must  have 
had  a  full  and  accurate  knowledge  of  that 
rather  obscure  and  intricate  subject — "  Felony 
and  Benefit  of  Clergy." 

*  "  Inter  Christianos  non  nominand." 


94:    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Cade's  proclamation,  which  follows,  deals 
with  still  more  recondite  heads  of  jurispru- 
dence. Announcing  his  policy  when  he  should 
mount  the  throne,  he  says  : — 

"  The  proudest  peer  in  the  realm  shall  not  wear  a 
head  on  his  shoulders  unless  he  pay  me  tribute :  there 
shall  not  a  maid  be  married  but  she  shall  pay  me  her 
maidenhead  ere  they  have  it.  Men  shall  hold  of  me  in 
capite;  and  we  charge  and  command  that  their  wives 
be  &sfree  as  heart  can  wish,  or  tongue  can  tell." 

He  thus  declares  a  great  forthcoming 
change  in  the  tenure  of  land  and  in  the  lia- 
bility to  taxation:  he  is  to  have  a  poll-tax 
like  that  which  had  raised  the  rebellion ;  but, 
instead  of  coming  down  to  the  daughters  of 
blacksmiths  who  had  reached  the  age  of  fif- 
teen, it  was  to  be  confined  to  the  nobility. 
Then  he  is  to  legislate  on  the  mercheta 
mulierum.  According  to  Blackstone  and 
other  high  authorities  this  never  had  been 
known  in  England  ;  although,  till  the  reign 
of  Malcolm  III.,  it  certainly  appears  to  have 
been  established  in  Scotland  ;  but  Cade  inti- 
mates his  determination  to  adopt  it, — with 
this  alteration,  that  instead  of  conferring  the 


KING   HENRY   THE   SIXTH. PART   II.          95 

privilege  on  every  lord  of  a  manor,  to  be  ex- 
ercised within  the  manor,  he  is  to  assume  it 
exclusively  for  himself  all  over  the  realm,  as 
belonging  to  his  prerogative  royal. 

He  proceeds  to  announce  his  intention  to 
abolish  tenure  in  free  soccage,  and  that  all 
men  should  hold  of  him  in  capite,  concluding 
with  a  licentious  jest,  that  although  his  sub- 
jects should  no  longer  hold  in  free  soccage, 
"  their  wives  should  be  as  free  as  heart  can 
wish,  or  tongue  can  tell."  Strange  to  say, 
this  phrase,  or  one  almost  identically  the 
same,  "  as  free  as  tongue  can  speak  or  heart 
can  think,"  is  feudal,  and  was  known  to  the 
ancient  law  of  England.  In  the  tenth  year 
of  King  Henry  VII.,  that  very  distinguished 
judge,  Lord  Hussey,  who  was  Chief  Justice 
of  England  during  four  reigns,  in  a  considered 
judgment  delivered  the  opinion  of  the  whole 
Court  of  King's  Bench  as  to  the  construction 
to  be  put  upon  the  words,  "  as  free  as  tongue 
can  speak  or  heart  can  think."  See  YEAR 
BOOK,  Hil  Term,  10  Hen.  VII.,  fol.  13, 
pi.  6. 


96    SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 


®raifa8  and  djjmssuk 

In  this  play  the  author  shows  his  insatia- 
ble desire  to  illustrate  his  descriptions  of  kiss- 
ing by  his  recollection  of  the  forms  used  in 
executing  deeds.  When  Pandarus  (Act  in. 
Sc.  2)  has  brought  Troilus  and  Cressida  to- 
gether in  the  Orchard  to  gratify  their  warm 
inclinations,  he  advises  Troilus  to  give  Cressi- 
da " a  kiss  in  fee-farm"  which  Malone  ex- 
plains to  be  "  a  kiss  of  a  duration  that  has  no 
bounds, — a  fee-farm  being  a  grant  of  lands  in 
fee,  that  is  for  ever,  reserving  a  rent  certain." 

The  advice  of  Pandarus  to  the  lovers  being 
taken,  he  exclaims — 

"What!  billing  again?  Here's — In  witness  the 
parties  interchangeably " 

the  exact  form  of  the  testatum  clause  in  an 
indenture — "In  witness  whereof  the  parties 
interchangeably  have  hereto  set  their  hands 
and  seals." 

To  avoid  a  return  to  this  figure  of  speech 


KING   LEAK.  97 

I  may  here  mention  other  instances  in  which 
Shakespeare  introduces  it.  In  '  Measure  for 
Measure/  Act  iv.  Sc.  1 — 

"  But  my  kisses  bring  again 
Seals  of  love,  but  sealed  in  vain : " 

and  in  his  poem  of '  Venus  and  Adonis ' — 

"  Pure  lips,  sweet  seals  in  my  soft  lips  imprinted, 
"What  bargains  may  I  make,  still  to  be  sealing  ?  " 


In  Act  i.  Sc.  4  the  Fool  makes  a  lengthy 
rhyming  speech,  containing  a  great  many  trite 
but  useful  moral  maxims,  suqh  as— - 

Have  more  than  thou  showest, 
Speak  less  than  thou  knowestj  &c., 

which  the  testy  old  King  found  rather  flat 
and  tiresome. 

Lear.  This  is  nothing,  fool. 
Fool.  Then,  'tis  like  the  Ireafh  of  an  iwfeed  lawyer: 
you  gave  me  nothing  for  it. 
5 


98     SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

This  seems  to  show  that  Shakespeare  had 
frequently  been  present  at  trials  in  courts  of 
justice,  and  now  speaks  from  his  own  recollec- 
tion. There  is  no  trace  of  such  a  proverbial 
saying  as  "  like  the  breath  of  an  unfeed  law- 
yer/'— while  all  the  world  knows  the  proverb, 
"  Whosoever  is  his  own  counsel  has  a  fool  for 
his  client." 

How  unfeed  lawyers  may  have  comported 
themselves  in  Shakespeare's  time  I  know  not ; 
but  I  am  bound  to  say,  in  vindication  of  "  my 
order/'  that  in  my  tirne  there  has  been  no 
ground  for  the  Fool's  sarcasm  upon  the  bar. 
The  two  occasions  when  "  the  breath  of  an 
unfeed  lawyer  "  attracts  notice  in  this  genera- 
tion are  when  he  pleads  for  a  party  suing  in 
forma  pauperis,  or  when  he  defends  a  person 
prosecuted  by  the  crown  for  high  treason.  It 
is  contrary  to  etiquette  to  take  a  fee  in  the 
one  case  as  well  as  in  the  other  ;  and  on  all 
such  occasions  counsel,  from  a  regard  to  their 
own  credit,  as  well  as  from  conscientious 
motives,  uniformly  exert  themselves  with  ex- 
traordinary zeal,  and  put  forth  all  their  learn- 
ing and  eloquence. 


KING   LEAR.  99 

I  confess  that  there  is  some  foundation  for 
the  saying  that  "a  lawyer's  opinion  which 
costs  nothing  is  worth  nothing  ;"  but  this  can 
only  apply  to  opinions  given  off-hand,  in  the 
course  of  common  conversation, — where  there 
is  no  time  for  deliberation,  where  there  is  a 
desire  to  say  what  will  be  agreeable,  and 
where  no  responsibility  is  incurred. 


In  Act  ii.  Sc.  1,  there  is  a  remarkable  ex- 
ample of  Shakespeare's  use  of  technical  legal 
phraseology.  Edmund,  the  wicked  illegiti- 
mate son  of  the  Earl  of  Grloster,  having  suc- 
ceeded in  deluding  his  father  into  the  belief 
that  Edgar,  the  legitimate  son,  had  attempt- 
ed to  commit  parricide,  and  had  been  pre- 
vented from  accomplishing  the  crime  by 
Edmund's  tender  solicitude  for  the  Earl's 
safety,  the  Earl  is  thus  made  to  express  a  de- 
termination that  he  would  disinherit  Edgar 
(who  was  supposed  to  have  fled  from  justice), 
and  that  he  would  leave  all  his  possessions  to 
Edmund : — 


100  SHAKESPEAKE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Glo.  Strong  and  fasten'd  villain  ! 

***** 
All  ports  I'll  bar ;  the  villain  shall  not  'scape. 
***** 

Besides,  his  picture 

I  will  send  far  and  near,  that  all  the  kingdom 
May  have  due  note  of  him  5*  and  of  my  land, 
Loyal  and  natural  boy,  I'll  work  the  means 
To  make  thee  capable. 

In  forensic  discussions  respecting  legiti- 
macy, the  question  is  put,  whether  the  in- 
dividual whose  status  is  to  be  determined  is 
"  capable/'  i.  e.  capable  of  inheriting ;  but  it 
is  only  a  lawyer  who  would  express  the  idea 
of  legitimising  a  natural  son  by  simply  say- 
ing— 

I'll  work  the  means 

To  make  him  capable. 


Again,  in  Act  in.  Sc.  5,  we  find  Edmund 
trying  to  incense  the  Duke  of  Cornwall  against 
his  father  for  having  taken  part  with  Lear 


*  One  would  suppose  that  photography,  by  which 
this  mode  of  catching  criminals  is  now  practised,  had 
been  invented  in  the  reign  of  King  Lear. 


KING   LEAK.  101 

when  so  cruelly  treated  by  Goneril  a#d  Be- 
gan. The  two  ddngptfc&fc  'had  become  the 
reigning  sovereigns,  tc  w^ir/^d^md /pro- 
fessed to  owe  allegiance.  Cornwall  having 
created  Edmund  Earl  of  Gloster  says  to  him — 

"Seek  out  where  thy  father  is3  that  he  may  be 
ready  for  our  apprehension." 

On  which  Edmund  observes  aside — 

"  If  I  find  him  comforting  the  King,  it  will  stuff  his 
suspicion  more  fully." 

Upon  this  Dr.  Johnson  has  the  following 
note  : — "  He  uses  the  word  [comforting]  in 
the  juridical  sense,  for  supporting,  helping." 

The  indictment  against  an  accessary  after 
the  fact,  for  treason,  charges  that  the  acces- 
sary "  comforted "  the  principal  traitor  after 
knowledge  of  the  treason. 


In  Act  in.  Sc.  6,  the  imaginary  trial  of 
the  two  unnatural  daughters  is  conducted  in 
a  manner  showing  a  perfect  familiarity  with 
criminal  procedure. 


102  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Lear  places  the  two  Judges  on  the  bench, 
viz.,  Mad  'Tons,  and  *  the  -Fool.  He  properly 
addresses,  the  former  as  "  the  robed  man  of 
justice/'  but,  although  both  were  aof  the 
commission/'  I  do  not  quite  understand  why 
the  latter  is  called  his  "  yokefellow  of  equity/' 
unless  this  might  be  supposed  to  be  a  special 
commission,  like  that  which  sat  on  Mary; 
Queen  of  Scots,  including  Lord  Chancellor 
Audley. 

Lear  causes  Groneril  to  be  arraigned  first, 
and  then  proceeds  as  a  witness  to  give  evi- 
dence against  her,  to  prove  an  overt  act  of 
high  treason : 

"  I  here  take  my  oath  before  this  honourable  assem- 
bly, she  kicked  the  poor  king,  her  father." 

But  the  trial  could  not  be  carried  on  with 
perfect  regularity  on  account  of  Lear's  mad- 
ness, and,  without  waiting  for  a  verdict,  he 
himself  sentences  Regan  to  be  anatomized  : — 

c  Then,  let  them  anatomize  Regan ;  see  what  breeds 
about  her  heart." 


HAMLET.  103 


In  this  tragedy  various  expressions  and 
allusions  crop  out,  showing  the  substratum 
of  law  in  the  author's  mind, — e.  </.,  the  de- 
scription of  the  disputed  territory  which  was 
the  cause  of  the  war  between  Norway  and 
•  Poland : — 

"We  go  to  gain  a  little  patch  of  ground, 

That  hath  in  it  no  profit  but  the  name. 

To  pay  five  ducats,  five,  I  would  not  farm  it, 

Nor  will  it  yield  to  Norway  or  the  Pole 

A  ranker  rate,  should  it  le  sold  in  fee.  (Act  iv.  Sc.  4.) 

Earlier  in  the  play  (Act  i.  Sc.  1)  Marcel- 
lus  inquires  what  was  the  cause  of  the  war- 
like preparations  in  Denmark — 

And  why  such  daily  cast  of  brazen  cannon, 
And  foreign  mart  for  implements  of  war  ? 
Wfiy  such  impress  of  shipwrights^  whose  sore  task 
Does  not  divide  the  /Sunday  from  the  weeTcf 

Such  confidence  has  there  been  in  Shake- 
speare's accuracy,  that  this  passage  has  been 


104:  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

quoted,  both  by  text  writers  and  by  Judges 
on  the  bench,  as  an  authority  upon  the  le- 
gality of  the  press-gang >  and  upon  the  de- 
bated question  whether  shipwrights,  as  well 
as  common  seamen,  are  liable  to  be  pressed 
into  the  service  of  the  royal  navy.* 


Hamlet,  when  mortally  wounded  in  Act  v. 
Sc.  2,  represents  that  Death  comes  to  him  in 
the  shape  of  a  sheriff's  officer,  as  it  were  to 
take  him  into  custody  under  a  capias  ad 
satisfaciendum  : — 

"  Had  I  but  time  (as  this  fell  Serjeant,  Death, 
Is  strict  in  his  arrest).  Oh !  I  could  tell  you,"  &c. 


The  Grave-diggers'  scene,  however,  is  the 
mine  which  produces  the  richest  legal  ore. 
The  discussion  as  to  whether  Ophelia  was  en- 
titled to  Christian  burial  proves  that  Shake- 
speare had  read  and  studied  Plowden's  Eeport 

*  See  Barrington  on  the  Ancient  Statutes,  p.  300. 


HAMLET.  105 

of  the  celebrated  case  of  Hales  v.  Petit,  tried 
in  the  reign  of  Philip  and  Mary,  and  that  he 
intended  to  ridicule  the  counsel  who  argued 
and  the  Judges  who  decided  it. 

On  the  accession  of  Mary  Tudor,  Sir 
James  Hales,  a  puisne  Judge  of  the  Common 
Pleas,  was  prosecuted  for  being  concerned  in 
the  plot  which  placed  the  Lady  Jane  Grey 
for  a  few  days  upon  the  throne  ;  but,  as  he 
had  previously  expressed  a  strong  opinion  that 
the  succession  of  the  right  heir  ought  not  to 
be  disturbed,  he  was  pardoned  and  released 
from  prison.  Nevertheless,  so  frightened  was 
he  by  the  proceedings  taken  against  him  that 
he  went  out  of  his  mind,  and,  after  attempt- 
ing suicide  by  a  penknife,  he  drowned  himself 
by  walking  into  a  river.  Upon  an  inquisition 
before  the  Coroner,  a  verdict  offelo  de  se  was 
returned.  Under  this  finding  his  body  was 
to  be  buried  in  a  cross-road,  with  a  stake 
thrust  through  it,  and  all  his  goods  were  for- 
feited to  the  crown.  It  so  happened  that  at 
the  time  of  his  death  he  was  possessed  of  a 
lease  for  years  of  a  large  estate  in  the  county 

of  Kent,  granted  by  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
5* 


106  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

terbury  jointly  to  him  and  his  wife,  the  Lady 
Margaret,  who  survived  him.  Upon  the  sup- 
position that  this  lease  was  forfeited,  the 
estate  was  given  by  the  crown  to  one  Oyriac 
Petit,  who  took  possession  of  it, — and  Dame 
Margaret  Hales,  the  widow,  brought  this  ac- 
tion against  him  to  recover  it.  The  only 
question  was  whether  the  forfeiture  could  be 
considered  as  having  taken  place  in  the  life- 
time of  Sir  James  Hales  :  for,  if  not,  the 
plaintiff  certainly  took  the  estate  by  survivor- 
ship. 

Her  counsel,.  Serjeants  Southcote  and 
Puttrel,  powerfully  argued  that,  the  offence 
of  suicide  being  the  killing  of  a  man's  self,  it 
could  not  be  completed  in  his  lifetime,  for  as 
long  as  he  was  alive  he  had  not  killed  him- 
self, and,  the  moment  that  he  died,  the  estate 
vested  in  the  plaintiff.  "  The  felony  of  the 
husband  shall  not  take  away  her  title  by  sur- 
vivorship, for  in  this  manner  of  felony  two 
things  are  to  be  considered — first,  the  cause 
of  the  death  ;  secondly,  the  death  ensuing 
the  cause ;  and  these  two  make  the  felony, 
and  without  both  of  them  the  felony  is  not 


HAMLET.  107 

consummate.  And  the  cause  of  the  death  is 
the  act  done  in  the  party's  lifetime,  which 
makes  the  death  to  follow.  And  the  act 
which  brought  on  the  death  here  was  the 
throwing  himself  voluntarily  into  the  water, 
for  this  was  the  cause  of  his  death.  And  if  a 
man  kills  himself  by  a  wound  which  he  gives 
himself  with  a  knife,  or  if  he  hangs  himself, 
as  the  wound  or  the  hanging,  which  is  the  act 
done  in  the  party's  lifetime,  is  the  cause  of 
his  death,  so  is  the  throwing  himself  into  the 
water  here.  Forasmuch  as  he  cannot  be  at- 
tainted of  his  own  death,  because  he  is  dead 
before  there  is  any  time  to  attaint  him,  the 
finding  of  his  death  by  the  Coroner  is  by  ne- 
cessity of  law  equivalent  to  an  attainder  in 
fact  coming  after  his  death.  He  cannot  be 
felo  de  se  till  the  death  is  fully  consummate, 
and  the  death  precedes  the  felony  and  the 
forfeiture." 

WALSH,  Serjeant,  contra,  argued  that  the 
felony  was  to  be  referred  back  to  the  act 
which  caused  the  death.  "The  act  consists 
of  three  parts  :  the  first  is  the  imagination, 
which  is  a  reflection  or  meditation  of  the 


108  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

mind,  whether  or  not  it  is  convenient  for  him 
to  destroy  himself,  and  what  way  it  can  be 
done  ;  the  second  is  the  resolution,  which  is  a 
determination  of  the  mind  to  destroy  himself ; 
the  third  is  the  perfection,  which  is  the  exe- 
cution of  what  the  mind  had  resolved  to  do. 
And  of  all  i3ie  parts,  the  doing  of  the  act  is 
the  greatest  in  the  judgment  of  our  law,  and 
it  is  in  effect  the  whole.  Then  here  the  act 
done  by  Sir  James  Hales,  which  is  evil,  and 
the  cause  of  his  death,  is  the  throwing  him- 
self into  the  water,  and  the  death  is  but  a  se- 
quel thereof/' 

Lord  0.  J.  Dyer  and  the  whole  court  gave 
judgment  for  the  defendant,  holding  that  al- 
though Sir  James  Hales  could  hardly  be  said 
to  have  killed  himself  in  his  lifetime,  "the 
forfeiture  shall  have  relation  to  the  act  done 
by  Sir  James  Hales  in  his  lifetime,  which  was 
the  cause  of  his  death,  viz.,  the  throwing 
himself  into  the  water/'  Said  they,  "Sir 
James  Hales  was  dead,  and  how  came  he  to 
his  death  ?  by  drowning  ;  and  who  drowned 
him  ?  Sir  James  Hales  ;  and  when  did  he 
drown  him  ?  in  his  lifetime.  So  that  Sir 


HAMLET.  109 

James  Hales,  being  alive,  caused  Sir  James 
Hales  to  die  ;  and  the  act  of  the  living  man 
was  the  death  of  the  dead  man.  He  there- 
fore committed  felony  in  his  lifetime,  although 
there  was  no  possibility  of  the  forfeiture  being 
found  in  his  lifetime,  for  until  his  death  there 
was  no  cause  of  forfeiture." 

The  argument  of  the  gravediggers  upon 
Ophelia's  case  is  almost  in  the  words  reported 
by  Plowden : — 

1  Clo.  Is  she  to  be  buried  in  Christian  burial,  that 
wilfully  seeks  her  own  salvation  ? 

2  Clo.  The  crowner  hath  sate  on  her,  and  finds  it 
Christian  burial. 

1  Clo.  How  can  that  be,  unless  she  drowned  herself 
in  her  own  defence  ? 

2  do.  Why,  'tis  found  so. 

1  Clo.  It  must  be  se  offendendo ;  it  cannot  be  else. 
For  here  lies  the  point :  if  I  drown  myself  wittingly,  it 
argues  an  act ;  and  an  act  hath  three  branches ;  it  is  to 
act,  to  do,  and  to  perform.  Argal  she  drowned  herself 
wittingly.  *  *  *  Here  lies  the  water ;  good :  here 
stands  the  man ;  good.  If  the  man  go  to  this  water 
and  drown  himself,  it  is,  will  he,  nill  he,  he  goes  ;  mark 
you  that :  but  if  the  water  come  to  him  and  drown 
him,  he  drowns  not  himself.  Argal  he  that  is  not 
guilty  of  his  own  death  shortens  not  his  own  life. 


110  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

.2  Clo.  But  is  this  law? 

1  Clo.  Ay,  marry  is't,  crowner's  quest  law. 


Hamlet's  own  speech,  on  taking  in  his 
hand  what  he  supposed  might  be  the  skull  of 
a  lawyer,  abounds  with  lawyer-like  thoughts 
and  words : — 

"  Where  be  his  quiddits  now,  his  quillets,  his  cases, 
his  tenures,  and  his  tricks  ?  Why  does  he  suffer  this 
rude  knave  now  to  knock  him  about  the  sconce  with  a 
dirty  shovel,  and  will  not  tell  him  of  his  action  of  bat- 
tery? Humph!  This  fellow  might  be  in's  time  a 
great  buyer  of  land,  with  his  statutes,  his  recognizan- 
ces, his  fines,  his  double  vouchers,  his  recoveries :  is 
this  the  fine  of  his  fines,  and  the  recovery  of  his  recov- 
eries, to  have  his  fine  pate  full  of  fine  dirt  ?  will  his 
vouchers  vouch  him  no  more  of  his  purchases,  and 
double  ones  too,  than  the  length  and  breadth  of  a  pair 
of  indentures  ?" 

These  terms  of  art  are  all  used  seemingly 
with  a  full  knowledge  of  their  import  ;  and  it 
would  puzzle  some  practising  barristers  with 
whom  I  am  acquainted  to  go  over  the  whole 
seriatim,  and  to  define  each  of  them  satis- 
factorily. 


MACBETH.  Ill 


In  perusing  this  unrivalled  tragedy  I  am 
so  carried  away  by  the  intense  interest  which 
it  excites,  that  I  fear  I  may  have  passed  over 
legal  phrases  and  allusions  which  I  ought  to 
have  noticed  ;  but  the  only  passage  I  find 
with  the  juridical  mark  upon  it  in f  Macbeth/ 
is  in  Act  iv.  Sc.  1,  where,  the  hero  exulting  in 
the  assurance  from  the  Weird  Sisters  that  he 
can  receive  harm  from  "  none  of  woman  born/' 
he,  rather  in  a  lawyer-like  manner,  resolves  to 
provide  an  indemnity,  if  the  worst  should  come 
to  the  worst, — 

"But  yet  I'll  make  assurance  double  sure, 
And  take  a  loud  of  fate  ;  " 

— without  much  considering  what  should  be 
the  penalty  of  the  bond,  or  how  he  was  to  en- 
force the  remedy,  if  the  condition  should  be 
broken. 

He,  immediately  after,  goes  on  in  the 
same  legal  jargon  to  say, — 


112  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 


•  our  high-plac'd  Macbeth 


Shall  live  the  lease  of  nature." 

But,  unluckily  for  Macbeth,  the  lease  con- 
tained no  covenants  for  title  or  quiet  enjoy- 
ment : — there  were  likewise  forfeitures  to  Ibe 
incurred  by  the  tenant, — with  a  clause  of  re- 
entry,— a&d  consequently  he  was  speedily 
ousted.* 


In  the  very  first  scene  of  this  play  there 
is  a  striking  instance  of  Shakespeare's  prone- 
ness  to  legal  phraseology  : — where  lago, 
giving  an  explanation  to  Koderigo  of  the 


*  The  lease  frequently  presents  itself  to  Shake- 
speare's mind,  as  in  c  Richard  III./  Act  iv.  Sc.  4 — 

Tell  me  what  state,  what  dignity,  what  honour. 
Canst  thou  demise  to  any  child  of  mine  ? 

This  is  as  clear  a  reference  to  leasing,  as  if  he  had  said 
in  full, "  demise,  lease,  grant  and  to  farm  let." 


OTHELLO.  113 

manner  in  which,  he  had  been  disappointed  in 
not  obtaining  the  place  of  Othello's  lieutenant, 
notwithstanding  the  solicitations  in  his  favour 
of  "  three  great  ones  of  the  city/'  says — 

"  But  he,  as  loving  his  own  pride  and  purposes, 
Evades  them  with  a  bombast  circumstance 
Horribly  stuff 'd  with  epithets  of  war, 
And,  in  conclusion, 
Nonsuits  my  mediators." 

"Nonsuiting"  is  known  to  the  learned  to 
be  the  most  disreputable  and  mortifying  mode 
of  being  beaten  :  it  indicates  that  the  action 
is  wholly  unfounded  on  the  plaintiff's  own 
showing,  or  that  there  is  a  fatal  defect  in  the 
manner  in  which  his  case  has  been  got  up  : 
insomuch  that  Mr.  Chitty,  the  great  special 
pleader,  used  to  give  this  advice  to  young 
barristers  practising  at  nisi  prius  :— "  Always 

avoid  your  attorney  when  nonsuited,  for  till 

• 

he  has  a  little  time  for  reflection,  however 
much  you  may  abuse  the  Judge,  he  will  think 
that  the  nonsuit  was  all  your  fault/' 


SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

In  the  next  scene  Shakespeare  gives  us 
very  distinct  proof  that  he  was  acquainted 
with  Admiralty  law,  as  well  as  with  the  pro- 
cedure of  Westminster  Hall.  Describing  the 
feat  of  the  Moor  in  carrying  off  Desdemona 
against  her  father's  consent,  which  might 
either  make  or  mar  his  fortune,  according  as 
the  act  might  be  sanctioned  or  nullified,  lago 
observes — 

"  Faith,  he  to-night  hath  boarded  a  land  carack : 
If  it  prove  lawful  prize,  he's  made  for  ever ; " — 

the  trope  indicating  that  there  would  be  a 
suit  in  the  High  Court  of  Admiralty  to  de- 
termine the  validity  of  the  capture. 


Then  follows,  in  Act  i.  Sc.  3,  the  trial  of 
Othello  before  the  Senate,  as  if  he  had  been 
indicted  on  Stat.  33  Hen.  VII.  c.  8,  for  prac- 
tising "  conjuration,  witchcraft,  enchantment, 
and  sorcery,  to  provoke  to  unlawful  love." 
Brabantio,  the  prosecutor,  says — 

"  She  is  abused,  stol'n  from  me,  and  corrupted 
By  spells  and  medicines  bought  of  mountebanks ; 


OTHELLO.  115 

For  Nature  so  preposterously  to  err    *    *    * 
Sans  witchcraft  could  not." 

The  presiding  Judge  at  first  seems  alarm- 
ingly to  favour  the  prosecutor,  saying — 

Duke.  "Whoe'er  he  be  that  in  this  foul  proceeding 
Hath  thus  beguil'd  your  daughter  of  herself, 
And  you  of  her,  the  bloody  book  of  law 
You  shall  yourself  read,  in  the  bitter  letter, 
After  your  own  sense. . 

The  Moor,  although  acting  as  his  own 
counsel,  makes  a  noble  and  skilful  defence, 
directly  meeting  the  statutable  misdemeanour 
with  which  he  is  charged, — and  referring 
pointedly  to  the  very  words  of  the  indictment 
and  the  Act  of  Parliament : — 

"I  will  a  round  unvarnish'd  tale  deliver 
Of  my  whole  course  of  love ;  what  drugs,  what  charms, 
What  conjuration,  and  what  mighty  magic 
(For  such  proceedings  I  am  charged  withal) 
I  won  his  daughter  with." 

Having  fully  opened  his  case,  showing  that 
he  had  used  no  forbidden  arts,  and  having  ex- 
plained the  course  which  he  had  lawfully  pur- 
sued, he  says  in  conclusion : — 


116  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

"  This  only  is  the  witchcraft  I  have  used : 
Here  comes  the  lady — let  her  witness  it." 

He   then  examines  the  witness,   and  is 
honourably  acquitted. 


Again,  the  application  to  Othello  to  for- 
give Cassio  is  made  to  assume  the  shape  of  a 
juridical  proceeding.  Thus  Desdemona  con- 
cludes her  address  to  Cassio,  assuring  him  of 
her  zeal  as  his  Solicitor: — 

"  I'll  intermingle  every  thing  he  does 
With  Cassio's  suit :  Therefore  be  merry,  Cassio ; 
For  thy  Solicitor  shall  rather  die 
Than  give  thy  cause  away" — (Act  in.  sc.  3.) 


The  subsequent  part  of  the  same  scene 
shows  that  Shakespeare  was  well  acquainted 
with  all  courts,  low  as  well  as  high  ; — where 
lago  asks — 

Who  has  a  breast  so  pure 
But  some  uncleanly  apprehensions 
Keep  leets  and  law-days,  and  in  session  sit 
With  meditations  lawful  ? 


ANTONIO  AND  CLEOPATRA.       117 


Jlntmtg  and 


In  c  Julius  Csesar  '  I  could  not  find  a  sin- 
gle instance  of  a  Eoman  being  made  to  talk 
like  an  English  lawyer  ;  but  in  '  Antony  and 
Cleopatra'  (Act  i.  Sc.  4)  Lepidus,  in  trying 
to  palliate  the  bad  qualities  and  misdeeds  of 
Antony,  uses  the  language  of  a  conveyancer's 
chambers  in  Lincoln's  Inn  :  — 

"  His  faults,  in  him,  seem  as  the  spots  of  heaven, 
More  fiery  by  night's  blackness  ;  hereditary 
Rather  than  purchased." 

That  is  to  say,  they  are  taken  by  descent, 
not  by  purchase* 

Lay  gents  (viz.,  all  except  lawyers)  under- 
stand by  "  purchase"  buying  for  a  sum  of 


*  So  in  -'the  Second  Part  of  Henry  IV.,'  Act  iv. 
Sc.  4,  the  King,  who  had  usurped  the  crown,  says  to  the 
Prince  of  Wales — 

For  what  in  me  was  purchased 
Falls  upon  tnee  in  a  more  fairer  sort. 

i.  e.  I  took  by  purchase,  you  will  take  by  descent •. 


118  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

money,  called  the  price  ;  but  lawyers  consider 
that  "  purchase  "  is  opposed  to  descent, — that 
all  things  come  to  the  owner  either  by  descent 
or  by  purchase,  and  that  whatever  does  not 
come  through  operation  of  law  by  descent  is 
purchased,  although  it  may  be  the  free  gift 
of  a  donor.  Thus,  if  land  be  devised  by  will 
to  A.  in  fee,  he  tabes  by  purchase,  or  to  B. 
for  life,  remainder  to  A.  and  his  heirs,  B.  be- 
ing a  stranger  to  A.,  A.  takes  "by  purchase; 
but  upon  the  death  of  A.,  his  eldest  son  would 
take  by  descent. 

English  lawyers  sometimes  use  these  terms 
metaphorically,  like  LEPIDUS.  Thus  a  Law 
Lord  who  has  suffered  much  from  hereditary 
gout,  although  very  temperate  in  his  habits, 
says,  "  I  take  it  by  descent,  not  by  purchase." 
Again,  Lord  Chancellor  Eldon,  a  very  bad 
shot,  having  insisted  on  going  out  quite  alone 
to  shoot,  and  boasted  of  the  heavy  bag  of 
game  which  he  had  brought  home,  Lord  Stow- 
ell,  insinuating  that  he  had  filled  it  with  game 
bought  from  a  poacher,  used  to  say,  "My 
brother  takes  his  game — not  by  descent,  but 
by — purchase;" — this  being  a  pendant  to 


COKIOLANUS.  119 

another  joke  Lord  Stowell  was  fond  of — "  My 
brother,  the  Chancellor,  in  vacation  goes  out 
with  his  gun  to  kill — time." 


In  this  drama,  in  which  we  should  not  ex- 
pect to  find  any  allusion  to  English  juridical 
proceedings,  Shakespeare  shows  that  he  must 
have  been  present  before  some  tiresome,  testy, 
choleric  judges  at  Stratford,  Warwick,  or 
Westminster, — whom  he  evidently  intends  to 
depict  and  to  satirise, — like  my  distinguished 
friend  CHARLES  DICKENS,  in  his  famous  re- 
port of  the  trial  of  Bardel  v.  Pickwick,  be- 
fore Mr.  Justice  Starey,  for  breach  of  promise 
of  marriage.  Menenius  (Act  n.  Sc.  1),  in  re- 
proaching the  two  tribunes,  Sicinius  and  Bru- 
tus, with  their  own  offences,  which  they  for- 
get while  they  inveigh  against  Coriolanus, 
says — 

"  You  wear  out  a  good  wholesome  forenoon  in  hear- 


120  SHAKESPEAKE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

ing  a  cause  between  an  orange-wife  and  a  posset-seller 
and  then  re-journ  the  controversy  of  three  pence  to  a 
second  day  of  audience.  -When  you  are  hearing  a  mat- 
ter "between  party  and  party,  if  you  chance  to  be  pinch- 
ed with  the  colic,  you  make  faces  like  mummers,  set  up 
the  bloody  flag  against  all  patience,  and  in  roaring  for  a 
— pot  dismiss  the  controversy  pleading  more  en- 
tangled by  your  hearing:  all  the  peace  you  make  in 
their  cause  is,  calling  both  the  parties  knaves." 

Shakespeare  here  mistakes  the  duties  of 
the  Tribune  for  those  of  the  Prcetor; — but  in 
truth  he  was  recollecting  with  disgust  what 
he  had  himself  witnessed  in  his  own  country. 
Nowadays  all  English  judges  are  exemplary 
for  despatch,  patience,  and  good  temper  ! !  ! 


mtf  Julifi 


The  first  scene  of  this  romantic  drama 
may  "be  studied  by  a  student  of  the  Inns  of 
Court  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  law  of 
"  assault  and  battery/'  and  what  will  amount 
to  a  justification.  Although  Sampson  ex- 


ROMEO   AND  JULIET.  121 

claims,  "  My  naked  weapon  is  out :  quarrel, 
I  will  back  th.ee,"  he  adds,  "  Let  us  take  the 
law  of  our  sides  ;  let  them  begin."  Then  we 
learn  that  neither  frotvning,  nor  biting  the 
thumb,  nor  answering  to  a  question,  "  Do  you 
bite  your  thumb  at  us,  Sir  ?  "  "  I  do  bite  my 
thumb,  Sir," — would  be  enough  to  support 
the  plea  of  se  defendendo.* 

The  scene  ends  with  old  Montagu  and  old 
Oapulet  being  bound  over,  in  the  English 
fashion,  to  keep  the  peace, — in  the  same  man- 
ner as  two  Warwickshire  clowns,  who  had 
been  fighting,  might  have  been  dealt  with  at 
Charlecote  before  Sir  Thomas  Lucy. 


The  only  other  scene  in  this  play  I  have 
marked  to  be  noticed  for  the  use  of  law  terms 


*  To  show  the  ignorance  and  stupidity  of  Sir  An- 
drew Aguecheek  ('Twelfth  Night,5  Act  iv.  Sc.  1)  in 
supposing  that  son  assault  demesne  (or  that  the  Plaintiff 
gave  the  first  blow)  is  not  a  good  defence  to  an  action 
of  battery,  he  is  made  to  say,  "I'll  have  an  action  of 
battery  against  him,  if  there  be  any  law  in  Illyria: 
though  I  struck  Mm  first,  yet  it's  no  waiter  for  that." 
6 


122  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

is  that  between  Mercutio  and  Benvolio,  in 
which  they  keenly  dispute  which  of  the  two 
is  the  more  quarrelsome  ; — at  last  Benvolio, — 
not  denying  that  he  had  quarrelled  with  a 
man  for  coughing  in  the  street,  whereby  he 
wakened  Benvolio's  dog  that  lay  asleep  in  the 
sun, — or  that  he  had  quarrelled  with  another 
for  tying  his  new  shoes  with  old  riband, — con- 
tents himself  with  this  tu  quoque  answer  to 
Mercutio  : — 

An  I  were  so  apt  to  quarrel  as  thou  art,  any  man 
should  buy  ihe  fee-simple  of  my  life  for  an  hour  and  a 
quarter.  (Act  in.  Sc.  1.) 

Talking  of  the  fee-simple  of  a  man's  life, 
and  calculating  how  many  hours'  purchase  it 
was  worth,  is  certainly  what  might  not  un- 
naturally be  expected  from  the  clerk  of  a 
country  attorney.  * 


*  So  in  < All's  Well  that  Ends  Well'  (Act  iv.  Sc. 
3)  Parolles,  the  bragging  cowardly  soldier,  is  made  to 
talk  like  a  conveyancer  in  Lincoln's  Inn: — "He  will 
sell  the  fee-simple  of  his  salvation  *  *  and  cut  the 
entail  from  all  remainders" 


POEMS.  123 


With  a  view  to  your  inquiry  respecting 
the  learning  of  Shakespeare  I  have  now,  my 
dear  Mr.  Payne  Collier,  gone  through  all  his 
plays,  —  and  I  can  venture  to  speak  of  their 
contents  with  some  confidence,  having  been 
long  familiar  with  them.  His  Poems  are  by 
no  means  so  well  known  to  me  ;  for,  although 
I  have  occasionally  looked  into  them,  and  I 
am  not  blind  to  their  beauties,  I  must  confess 
that  I  never  could  discover  in  them  (like  some 
of  his  enthusiastic  admirers)  the  same  proofs 
of  surpassing  genius  which  render  him  im- 
mortal as  a  dramatist.  Biit  a  cursory  perusal 
of  them  £oes  discover  the  propensity  to  legal 
thoughts  and  words  which  might  be  expected 
in  an  attorney's  clerk  who  takes  to  rhyming. 

I  shall  select  a  few  instances,  without  un- 
necessarily adding  any  comment. 

From  VENUS  AND  ADONIS. 

"  But  when  the  heart's  attorney  once  is  mute, 
The  client  breaks  as  desperate  in  the  suit." 


124:  SHAKESPEAKE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIKEMENTS. 

"  Which  purchase  if  thou  make  for  fear  of  slips, 
Set  thy  seal-manual  on  my  wax-red  lips." 

"  Her  pleading  hath  deserved  a  greater  fee" 

From  the  EAPE  OF  LUCRECE. 
"  Dim  register  and  notary  of  shame." 


"  For  me  I  force  not  argument  a  straw, 
Since  that  my  case  is  past  the  help  of  law" 

"  No  rightful  plea  might  plead  for  justice  there." 
"  Hath  served  a  dumb  arrest  upon  his  tongue." 


From  the  SONNETS. 

• 

u  When  to  the  sessions  of  sweet  silent  thought 
I  summon  up  remembrance  of  things  past." 


"  So  should  that  beauty  which  you  hold  in  lease." 
"  And  summer's  lease  hath  all  too  short  a  date." 
"And  'gainst  thyself  a  lawful  plea  commence." 


SONNETS.  125 

But  be  contented ;  when  that  fell  arrest 
Without  all  bail  shall  carry  me  away."* 


rt  Of  faults  concealed,  wherein  I  am  attainted." 

"  Which  works  on  leases  of  short  numbered  hours." 

f  c  Lord  of  my  love,  to  whom  in  vassalage 
Thy  merit  hath  my  duty  strongly  knit, 
To  thee  I  send  this  written  embassage."t 

"  And  I  myself  am  mortgaged" 


"  Why  so  large  cost,  having  so  short  a  lease  ?  "J 


"  So  should  that  beauty,  which  you  hold  in  lease, 
Find  no  determination"^ 


*  Death  is  the  sheriff's  officer,  strict  in  his  arrest, 
and  will  take  no  bail. 

t  This  is  the  beginning  of  a  love-letter,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  a  vassal  doing  homage  to  his  liege  lord. 

J  Taxing  an  overcharge  in  the  attorney's  bill  of 
costs. 

§  The  word  "determination"  is  always  used  by 
lawyers  instead  of  "  end." 


126  SHAKESPEAKE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIKEMEOTS. 


SONNET  XL VI. 

"  Mine  Eye  and  Heart  are  at  a  mortal  war 
How  to  divide  the- conquest  of  thy  sight; 
Mine  Eye  my  Heart  thy  picture's  sight  would  bar, 
My  Heart  mine  Eye  the  freedom  of  that  right. 
My  Heart  doth  plead  that  thou  in  him  dost  lie 
(A  closet  never  pierced  with  crystal  eyes), 
But  the  Defendant  doth  that  plea  deny, 
And  says  in  him  thy  fair  appearance  lies. 
To  'cide  this  title  is  impannelled 
A  quest  of  thoughts,  all  tenants  to  the  Heart ; 
And  by  their  verdict  is  determined 
The  clear  Eye's  moiety,  and  the  dear  Heart's  part ; 
As  thus :  mine  Eyes'  due  is  thine  outward  part, 
And  my  Heart's  right,  thine  inward  love  of  heart." 


I  need  not  go  further  than  this  sonnet, 
which  is  so  intensely  legal  in  its  language  and 
imagery,  that  without  a  considerable  knowl- 
edge of  English  forensic  procedure  it  cannot 
be  fully  understood.  A  lover  being  supposed 
to  have  made  a  conquest  of  [i.  e.  to  have 
gained  by  purchase]  his  mistress,  his  EYE  and 
his  HEART,  holding  as  joint-tenants,  have  a 
contest  as  to  how  she  is  to  be  partitioned  be- 


SONNETS.  127 

tween  them, — each  moiety  then  to  be  held  in 
severalty.  There  are  regular  Pleadings  in 
the  suit,  the  HEAKT  being  represented  as 
Plaintiff  and  the  EYE  as  Defendant.  At 
last  issue  is  joined  on  what  the  one  affirms 
and  the  other  denies.  Now  a  jury  [in  the 
nature  of  an  inquest]  is  to  be  impannelled  to 
'cide  [decide]  and  by  their  verdict  to  appor- 
tion between  the  litigating  parties  the  subject 
matter  to  be  divided.  The  jury  fortunately 
are  unanimous,  and  after  due  deliberation  find 
for  the  EYE  in  respect  of  the  lady's  outward 
form,  and  for  the  HEART  in  respect  of  her  in- 
ward love. 

Surely  Sonnet  XLVI.  smells  as  potently  of 
the  attorney's  office  as  any  of  the  stanzas 
penned  by  Lord  Kenyon  while  an  attorney's 
clerk  in  Wales. 


128  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 


's  WSXL 


Among  Shakespeare's  writings,  I  tliink 
that  attention  should  be  paid  to  his  WILL; 
for,  upon  a  careful  perusal,  it  will  be  found 
to  have  been  in  all  probability  composed  by 
himself.  It  seems  much  too  simple,  terse, 
and  condensed,  to  have  been  the  composition 
of  a  Stratford  attorney,  who  was  to  be  paid 
by  the  number  of  lines  which  it  contained. 
But  a  testator,  without  professional  experi- 
ence, could  hardly  have  used  language  so  ap- 
propriate as  we  find  in  this  will,  to  express 
his  meaning. 

Shakespeare,  the  greatest  of  British  dram- 
atists, appears  to  have  been  as  anxious  as 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  the  greatest  of  British 
novelists,  to  found  a  family,  although  he  does 
not  require  all  his  descendants  to  "  bear  the 
name  and  arms  of  Shakespeare/'  But,  as  far 
as  the  rules  of  English  law  would  permit,  he 
seeks  to  perpetuate  in  an  heir  male,  descended 
from  one  of  his  daughters  (his  son  having  died 


ins  WILL.  129 

in  infancy,  and  there  being  no  longer  any 
prospect  of  issue  male  of  his  own),  all  the 
houses  and  lands  he  had  acquired, — which 
were  quite  sufficient  for  a  respectable  War- 
wickshire squire.  His  favourite  daughter, 
Susanna,  married  to  Dr.  Hall,  an  eminent 
physician,  was  to  be  the  stirps  from  which 
this  line  of  male  heirs  was  to  spring  ;  and  the 
testator  creates  an  estate  in  tail  male, — with 
remainders  over,  which,  but  for  fines  and  re- 
coveries, would  have  kept  the  whole  of  his 
property  in  one  male  representative  for  gen- 
erations to  come. 

The  will,  dated  25th  March,  1616,  a 
month  before  his  death,  having  given  legacies 
to  various  friends  and  relations,  thus  pro- 
ceeds : 

"  Item,  I  give,  will,  bequeath,  and  devise,  unto  my 
daughter,  Susanna  Hall,  for  better  enabling  of  her  to 
perform  this  my  will  and  towards  performance  thereof, 
all  that  capital  messuage  or  tenement,  with  the  appur- 
tenances, in  Stratford  aforesaid,  called  the  New  Place, 
wherein  I  now  dwell,  and  two  messuages  or  tenements 
with  the  appurtenances,  situate,  lying,  and  being  in 
Henley  Street,  within  the  borough  of  Stratford  afore- 

6* 


130  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

said ;  and  all  my  barns,  stables,  orchards,  gardens, 
lands,  tenements,  and  hereditaments  whatsoever,  sit- 
uate, lying,  and  being,  or  to  be  had,  received,  perceived, 
or  taken,  within  the  towns,  hamlets,  villages,  fields, 
and  grounds  of  Stratford-upon-Avon,  Old  Stratford, 
Bishopton,  and  Welcombe,  or  in  any  of  them,  in  the 
said  county  of  Warwick ;  and  also  all  that  messuage  or 
tenement,  with  the  appurtenances,  wherein  one  John 
Robinson  dwelleth,  situate,  lying,  and  being  in  the 
Blackfriars  in  London,  near  the  "Wardrobe ;  and  all 
other  my  lands,  tenements,  and  hereditaments  whatso- 
ever; to  have  and  to  hold  all  and  singular  the  said 
premises,  with  their  appurtenances,  unto  the  said  Su- 
sanna Hall,  for  and  during  the  term  of  her  natural 
life ;  and  after  her  decease,  to  the  first  son  of  her  body 
lawfully  issuing,  and  to  the  heirs  males  of  the  body  of 
the  said  first  son  lawfully  issuing ;  and  for  default  of 
such  issue,  to  the  said  second  son  of  her  body  lawfully 
issuing,  and  to  the  heirs  males  of  the  body  of  the  sec- 
ond son  lawfully  issuing ;  and  for  default  of  such  heirs, 
to  the  third  son  of  the  body  of  the  said  Susanna  law- 
fully issuing,  and  to  the  heirs  males  of  the  body  of  the 
said  third  son  lawfully  issuing ;  and  for  default  of  such 
issue,  the  same  so  to  be  and  remain  to  the  fourth,  fifth, 
sixth,  and  seventh  sons  of  her  body,  lawfully  issuing 
one  after  another,  and  to  the  heirs  males  of  the  bodies 
of  the  said  fourth,  fifth,  sixth,  and  seventh  sons  law- 
fully issuing,  in  such  manner  as  it  is  before  limited  to 
be  and  remain  to  the  first,  second,  and  third  sons  of  her 
body,  and  to  their  heirs  males ;  and  for  default  of  such 


HIS   WILL.  131 

issue,  the  said  premises  to  be  and  remain  to  my  said 
niece  Hall,  and  the  heirs  males  of  her  body  lawfully 
issuing ;  and  for  default  of  such  issue,  to  my  daughter 
Judith,  and  the  heirs  males  of  her  body  lawfully  issu- 
ing ;  and  for  default  of  such  issue,  to  the  right  heirs  of 
me  the  said  William  Shakespeare  for  ever." 

In  his  will,  when  originally  engrossed, 
there  was  no  notice  whatever  taken  of  his 
wife  ;  but  immediately  after  these  limitations 
he  subsequently  interpolated  a  bequest  to  her 
in  the  following  words  : — 

"  I  give  unto  my  wife  my  second  best  bed  with  the 
furniture." 

The  subject  of  this  magnificent  gift  being 
only  personal  property,  he  shows  his  technical 
skill  by  omitting  the  word  devise,  which  he 
had  used  in  disposing  of  his  reality.'*' 


*  The  idolatrous  worshippers  of  Shakespeare,  who 
think  it  .necessary  to  make  his  moral  qualities  as  ex- 
alted as  his  poetical  genius,  account  for  this  sorry  be- 
quest, and  for  no  other  notice  being  taken  of  poor  Mrs. 
Shakespeare  in  the  will,  by  saying  that  he  knew  she 
was  sufficiently  provided  for  by  her  right  to  dower  out 
of  his  landed  property,  which  the  law  would  give  her ; 
and  they  add  that  he  must  have  leen  tenderly  attached 


132  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Having  concluded  my  examination  of 
Shakespeare's  juridical  phrases  and  forensic 
allusions, — on  the  retrospect  I  am  amazed, 


to  her,  because  (they  take  upon  themselves  to  say)  she 
was  exquisitely  beautiful  as  well  as  strictly  virtuous. 
But  she  was  left  by  her  husband  without  house  or  fur- 
niture (except  the  second  best  bed),  or  a  kind  word,  or 
any  other  token  of  his  love  ;  and  I  sadly  fear  that  be- 
tween William  Shakespeare  and  Ann  Hathaway  the 
course  of  true  love  never  did  run  smooth.  His  boyish 
inexperience  was  no  doubt  pleased  for  a  short  time 
with  her  caresses ;  but  he  probably  found  that  their 
union  was  "  misgraifed  in  respect  of  years,"  and  gave 
advice  from  his  own  experience  when  he  said, — 

"  Let  still  the  woman  take 
An  elder  than  herself;  so  wears  she  to  him, 
So  sways  she  level  in  her  husband's  heart. 

For,  boy,  however  we  do  praise  ourselves, 
Our  fancies  are  more  giddy  and  infirm, 
More  longing,  wavering,  sooner  lost  and  worn, 
Than  women's  are.    *    * 
Then  let  thy  love  be  younger  than  thyself, 
Or  thy  affection  cannot  hold  the  bent ; 
For  women  are  like  roses ;  whose  fair  flower, 
Being  once  displayed,  doth  fall  that  very  hour." 

To  strengthen  the  suspicion  that  Shakespeare  was 
likely  not  to  have  much  respect  for  his  wife,  persons 
animated  by  the  spirit  of  the  -late  John  Wilson  Croker 
(although  Shakespeare'-s  biographers,  in  the  absence 
of  any  register  of  his  marriage,  had  conjectured  that  it 
took  place  in  June,  1582),  by  searching  the  records  of 


KETKOSPECT.  133 

not  only  by  their  number,  but  by  the  accura- 
cy and  propriety  with  which  they  are  uniform- 
ly introduced.  There  is  nothing  so  dangerous 
as  for  one  not  of  the  craft  to  tamper  with  our 
free-masonry.  In  the  House  of  Commons  I 
have  heard  a  county  member,  who  meant  to 
intimate  that  he  entirely  concurred  with  the 
last  preceding  speaker,  say,  "  I  join  issue  with 
the  honourable  gentleman  who  has  just  sat 
down  ; "  the  legal  sense  of  which  is,  "  I  flatly 
contradict  all  his  facts  and  deny  his  infer- 
ences." JUNIUS,  who  was  fond  of  dabbling 
in  law,  and  who  was  supposed  by  some  to  be 
a  lawyer  (although  Sir  Philip  Francis,  then  a 
clerk  in  the  War  Office,  is  now  ascertained, 


the  Ecclesiastical  Court  at  "Worcester,  have  lately  made 
the  very  awkward  discovery  that  the  bond  given  on 
grant  of  the  licence  for  William  Shakespeare  to  marry 
Ann  Hathaway  is  dated  26th  November,  1582,  while 
the  entry  in  the  parish  register  of  the  baptism  of 
Susanna,  their  eldest  child,  is  dated  26th  May,  1583. 
As  Shakespeare,  at  the  time  of  this  misfortune,  was  a 
lad  of  eighteen  years  of  age,  and  Miss  Hathaway  was 
more  than  seven  years  his  senior,  he  could  hardly  have 
been  the  seducer ;  and  I  am  afraid  that  she  was  "  no 
better  than  she  should  be,"  whatever  imaginary  per- 
sonal charms  may  be  imputed  to  her. 


134:  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

beyond  all  doubt,  to  have  been  the  man),  in 
his  address  to  the  English  nation,  speaking 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  wishing  to  say 
that  the  beneficial  interest  in  the  state  be- 
longs to  the  people,  and  not  to  their  represent- 
atives, says,  "They  are  only  trustees;  the  fee 
is  in  us/'  Now  every  attorney's  clerk  knows 
that  when  land  is  held  in  trust,  the  fee  (or 
legal  estate)  is  in  the  trustee,  and  that  the 
beneficiary  has  only  an  equitable  interest. 
While  Novelists  and  Dramatists  are  constant- 
ly making  mistakes  as  to  the  law  of  marriage, 
of  wills,  and  of  inheritance, — to  Shakespeare's 
law,  lavishly  as  he  propounds  it,  there  can 
neither  be  demurrer,  nor  bill  of  exceptions, 
nor  writ  of  error. 

He  is  no  doubt  equally  accurate  in  refer- 
ring to  some  other  professions,  but  these  refer- 
ences are  rare  and  comparatively  slight. 
Some  have  contended  that  he  must  have  been 
by  trade  a  gardener,  from  the  conversation,  in 
the  '  WINTER'S  TALE/  between  Perdita,  Po- 
lixenes,  and  Florizel,  about  raising  carnations 
and  gilliflowers,  and  the  skilful  grafting  of 
fruit  trees.  Others  have  contended  that 


HIS  REFERENCES  TO  OTHER  PROFESSIONS.     135 

Shakespeare  must  have  been  bred  to  the  sea, 
from  the  nautical  language  in  which  directions 
are  given  for  the  manoeuvring  of  the  ship  in 
the  '  TEMPEST/  and  from  the  graphic  descrip- 
tion in  Henry  IV.'s  soliloquy  of  trie  "  high  and 
giddy  mast/'  of  the  "  ruffian  billows/'  of  the 
"  slippery  shrouds/'  and  of  "  sealing  up  the 
ship  boy's  eyes."  Nay,  notwithstanding  the 
admonition  to  be  found  in  his  works,  "  Throw 
physic  to  the  dogs/'  it  has  been  gravely  sug- 
gested that  he  must  have  been  initiated  in 
medicine,  from  the  minute  inventory  of  the 
contents  of  the  apothecary's  shop  in  f  Borneo 
and  Juliet.'  But  the  descriptions  thus  re- 
lied upon,  however  minute,  exact,  and  pictu- 
resque, will  be  found  to  be  the  result  of  casual 
observation,  and  they  prove  only  nice  percep- 
tion, accurate  recollection,  and  extraordinary 
power  of  pictorial  language.  Take  the  last 
instance  referred  to — Borneo's  photograph  of 
the  apothecary  and  his  shop. 

"  Meagre  were  his  looks, 
Sharp  misery  had  worn  him  to  the  bones : 
And  in  his  needy  shop  a  tortoise  hung, 
An  alligator  stuffed,  and  other  skins 


136  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Of  ill-shaped  fishes ;  and  about  his  shelves 
A  beggarly  account  of  empty  boxes. 
Green  earthen  pots,  bladders  and  musty  seeds. 
Remnants  of  packthread  and  old  cakes  of  roses, 
"Were  thinly  scattered  to  make  up  a  show." 

(Act  v.  Sc.  1.) 

Any  observing  customer,  who  had  once  enter- 
ed the  shop  to  buy  a  dose  of  rhubarb,  might 
have  safely  given  a  similar  account  of  what 
he  saw,  although  utterly  ignorant  of  Galen 
and  Hippocrates.  But  let  a  non-professional 
man,  however  acute,  presume  to  talk  law,  or 
to  draw  illustrations  from  legal  science  in 
discussing  other  subjects,  and  he  will  very 
speedily  fall  into  some  laughable  absurdity. 

To  conclude  my  summing  up  of  the  evi- 
dence under  this  head,  I  say,  if  Shakespeare 
is  shown  to  have  possessed  a  knowledge  of 
law,  which  he  might  have  acquired  as  clerk 
in  an  attorney's  office  in  Stratford,  and  which 
he  could  have  acquired  in  no  other  way,  we 
are  justified  in  believing  the  fact  that  he  was 
a  clerk  in  an  attorney's  office  at  Stratford, 
without  any  direct  proof  of  the  fact.  Logi- 
cians and  jurists  allow  us  to  infer  a  fact  of 


STATE   OF   THE   EVIDENCE.  137 

which  there  is  no  direct  proof,  from  facts  ex- 
pressly proved,  if  the  fact  to  be  inferred  may 
have  existed,  if  it  be  consistent  with  all  other 
facts  known  to  exist,  and  if  facts  known  to 
exist  can  only  be  accounted  for  by  inferring 
the  fact  to  be  inferred. 

But,  my  dear  Mr.  Payne  Collier,  you  must 
not  from  all  this  suppose  that  I  have  really 
become  an  absolute  convert  to  your  side  of 
the  question.  JENEAS,  while  in  the  shades 
below,  for  a  time  believed  in  the  reality  of  all 
he  seemed  to  see  and  to  hear;  but,  when  dis- 
missed through  the  ivory  gate,  he  found  that 
he  had  been  dreaming.  I  hope  that  my  argu- 
ments do  not "  cpme  like  shadows,  so  depart." 
Still  I  must  warn  you  that  I  myself  remain 
rather  sceptical.  All  that  I  can  admit  to  you 
is  that  you  may  be  right,  and  that  while  there 
is  weighty  evidence  for  you,  there  is  nothing 
conclusive  against  you. 

Kesuming  the  Judge,  however,  I  must  lay 
down  that  your  opponents  are  not  called  upon 
to  prove  a  negative,  and  that  the  onus  pro- 
bandi  rests  upon  you.  You  must  likewise  re- 
member that  you  require  us  implicitly  to  be- 


138  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

lieve  a  fact,  which,  were  it  true,  positive  and 
irrefragable  evidence  in  Shakespeare's  own 
handwriting  might  have  been  forthcoming  to 
establish  it.  Not  having  been  actually  inroll- 
ed  as  an  attorney,  neither  the  records  of  the 
local  court  at  Stratford,  nor  of  the  superior 
courts  at  Westminster,  would  present  his 
name,  as  being  concerned  in  any  suits  as  an 
attorney  ;  but  it  might  have  been  reasonably 
expected  that  there  would  have  been  deeds  or 
wills  witnessed  by  him  still  extant ; — and, 
after  a  very  diligent  search,  none  such  can  be 
discovered.  Nor  can  this  consideration  be 
disregarded,  that  between  Nash's  Epistle  in 
the  end  of  the  16th  century^  and  Chalmers's 
suggestion  more  than  two  hundred  years  after, 
there  is  no  hint  by  his  foes  or  his  friends  of 
Shakespeare  having  consumed  pens,  paper, 
ink,  and  pounce  in  an  attorney's  office  at 
Stratford.* 

I  am  quite  serious  and  sincere  in  what  I 


*  "  Three  years  I  sat  his  smoky  room  in 
Pens,  paper,  ink,  and  pounce  consumin'." 

Pleader's  Guide. 


STATE   OF   THE   EVIDENCE.  139 

have  written  about  Nash  and  Kobert  Greene 
having  asserted  the  fact ;  but  I  by  no  means 
think  that  on  this  ground  alone  it  must  neces- 
sarily be  taken  for  truth.  Their  statement 
that  he  had  belonged  to  the  profession  of  the 
law  may  be  as  false  as  that  he  was  a  plagiarist 
from  Senec&.  Nash  and  Eobert  Greene  may 
have  invented  it,  or  repeated  it  on  some 
groundless  rumour.  Shakespeare  may  have 
contradicted  and  refuted  it  twenty  times  ;  or, 
not  thinking  it  discreditable,  though  untrue, 
he  may  have  thought  it  undeserving  of  any 
notice.  Observing  what  fictitious  statements 
are  introduced  into  the  published  "  Litfes  "  of 
living  individuals,  in  our  own  time,  when 
truth  in  such  matters  can  be  so  much  more 
easily  ascertained,  and  error  so  much  more 
easily  corrected,  we  should  be  slow  to  give 
faith  to  an  uncorroborated  statement  made 
near  three  centuries  ago  by  persons  who  were 
evidently  actuated  by  'malice.* 


*  In  several  successive  Lives  of  Lord  Chief  Justice 
Campbell  it  is  related  that,  by  going  for  a  few  weeks  to 
Ireland  as  Chancellor^  he  obtained  a  pension  of  4000?.  a 
year,  which  he  has  ever  since  received,  thereby  robbing 


140  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

What  you  have  mainly  to  rely  upon  (and 
this  consideration  may  prevail  in  your  favour 
with  a  large  majority  of  the  literary  world)  is 
the  seemingly  utter  impossibility  of  Shake- 
speare having  acquired,  on  any  other  theory, 
the  wonderful  knowledge  of  law  which  he  un- 
doubtedly displays.  But  we  must  bear  in 
mind  that,  although  he  was  a  mortal  man, 
and  nothing  miraculous  can  be  attributed  to 
him,  he  was  intellectually  the  most  gifted  of 


the  public ;  whereas  in  truth  and  in  fact}  he  made  it  a 
stipulation  on  his  going  to  Ireland  that  he  should  re- 
ceive no  pension — and  pension  he  never  did  receive — 
and,  without  pension  or  place,  for  years  after  he  re- 
turned from  Ireland  he  regularly  served  the  public  in 
the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council,  and  in 
the  judicial  business  of  the  House  of  Lords.  This  er- 
roneous statement  is  to  be  found  in  a  recent  Life  of 
Lord  C.,  which  is  upon  the  whole  laudatory  above  due 
measure,  but  in  which  the  author  laments  that  there 
was  one  fault  to  be  imputed  to  him  which  could  not  be 
passed  over  by  an  impartial  biographer,  viz.,  that  he 
had  most  improperly  obtained  this  Irish  pension,  which 
he  still  continues  to  receive  without  any  benefit  being 
derived  by  the  public  from  his  services. — Lord  C.  ought 
to  speak  tenderly  of  Biographers,  but  I  am  afraid  that 
they  may  sometimes  be  justly  compared  to  the  hogs  of 
Westphalia,  who  without  discrimination  pick  up  what 
falls  from  one  another. 


STATE   OF  THE   EVIDENCE.  14:1 

mankind,  and  that  lie  was  capable  of  acquir- 
ing knowledge  where  the  opportunities  he  en- 
joyed would  have  been  insufficient  for  any 
other.  Supposing  that  John  the  father  lived 
as  a  gentleman,  or  respectably  carried  on 
trade  as  one  of  the  principal  inhabitants  of 
the  town,  and  that  William  the  son,  from  the 
time  of  leaving  the  grammar-school  till  he 
went  to  London,  resided  with  his  father,  as- 
sisting him  in  the  management  of  his  houses 
and  land  and  any  ancillary  business  carried  on 
by  him, — the  son  might  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  attending  trials  in  the  Stratford 
Court  of  Eecord,  and  when  of  age  he  might 
have  been  summoned  to  serve  as  a  juryman 
there  or  at  the  Court  Leet ;  he  might  have 
been  intimate  with  some  of  the  attorneys  who 
practised  in  the  town  and  with  their  clerks, 
and  while  in  their  company  at  fairs,  wakes, 
church  ales,  bowling-,  bell-ringing-,  and  hurl- 
ing-matches,  he  might  not  only  have  picked 
up  some  of  their  professional  jargon,  but  gain- 
ed some  insight  into  the  principles  of  their 
calling,  which  are  not  without  interest  to  the 
curious. 


142  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

Moreover,  it  is  to  be  considered  that,  al- 
though Shakespeare  in  1589  was  unquestion- 
ably a  shareholder  in  the  Blackfriars  Theatre, 
and  had  trod  the  boards  as  an  actor,  the  time 
when  he  began  to  write  for  the  stage  is  uncer- 
tain ;  and  we  are  not  in  possession  of  any  piece 
which  we  assuredly  know  to  have  been  written 
and  finished  by  him  before  the  year  1592. 
Thus  there  was  a  long  interval  between  his 
arrival  in  London  and  the  publication  of  any 
of  the  dramas  from  which  my  selections  are 
made.  In  this  interval  he  was  no  doubt  con- 
versant with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men. 
I  am  sorry  to  say  I  cannot  discover  that  at 
any  period  of  his  life  Lord  Chancellors  or  Lord 
Chief  Justices  showed  the  good  taste  to  culti- 
vate his  acquaintance.*  But  he  must  have 
been  intimate  with  the  students  at  the  Inns 
of  Court,  who  were  in  the  habit  of  playing 
before  Queen  Elizabeth  at  Greenwich,  as  he 


*  Although  it  is  said  that  Shakespeare  was  intro- 
duced to  Lord  Chancellor  Ellesmere,  Lord  Somers  is 
the  first  legal  dignitary  I  find  forming  friendships  with 
literary,  men. 


STATE   OF  THE  EVIDENCE.  143 

took  a  part  in  these  court  theatricals  ;  and 
the  author,  in  all  probability,  was*  present 
among  the  lawyers  when  '  Twelfth  Night ' 
was  brought  out  at  the  Keaders'  Feast  in  the 
Middle  Temple,  and  when  '  Othello '  was 
acted  at  Lord  Chancellor  Ellesmere's  before 
Queen  Elizabeth. 

Shakespeare,  during  his  first  years  in 
London,  when  his  purse  was  low,  may  have 
dined  at  the  ordinary  in  Alsatia,  thus  de- 
scribed by  Dekker,  where  he  may  have  had  a 
daily  surfeit  of  law,  if,  with  his  universal 
thirst  for  knowledge,  he  had  any  desire  to 
drink  deeply  at  this  muddy  fountain  : 

"  There  is  another  ordinary  at  which  your  London 
usurer,  your  stale  bachelor  and  your  thrifty  attorney 
do  resort ;  the  price  three-pence ;  the  rooms  as  full  of 
company  as  a  gaol ;  and  indeed  divided  into  several 
wards,  like  the  beds  of  an  hospital.  *  *  *  If  they 
chance  to  discourse,  it  is  of  nothing  but  of  statutes, 
bonds,  recognizances,  fines,  recoveries,  audits,  rents,  sub- 
sidies, sureties,  enclosures,  liveries,  indictments,  outlaw- 
ries, feoffments,  judgments,  commissions,  bankrupts, 
amercements,  and  of  such  horrible  matter." — Dekker*s 
GulVs  Hornbook,  1609. 

In  such  company  a  willing  listener  might 


14:4:  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

soon  make  great  progress  in  law  ;  and  it  may 
be  urged,  that  I  have  unconsciously  exagger- 
ated the  difficulty  to  be  encountered  by  Shake- 
speare in  picking  up  his  knowledge  of  that 
which  I  myself  have  been  so  long  labouring  to 
understand.  Many  may  think  that  Shake- 
speare resembles  his  own  Prince  Hal,  when 
reformed  and  become  Henry  V.,  who,  not- 
withstanding his  revels  in  East  Cheap,  and 
with  no  apparent  opportunities  of  acquiring 
the  knowledge  he  displayed,  astonished  the 
world  with  his  universal  wisdom  : 

"  Hear  him  but  reason  in  divinity. 
And,  all-admiring,  with  an  inward  wish, 
You  would  desire  the  king  were  made  a  prelate. 
Hear  him  debate  of  commonwealth  affairs. 
You  would  say,  it  hath  been  all-in-all  his  study. 
List  his  discourse  of  war,  and  you  shall  hear 
A  fearful  battle  render'd  you  in  music. 
Turn  him  to  any  cause  of  policy, 
The  Gordian  knot  of  it  he  will  unloose 
Familiar  as  his  garter ;  that,  when  he  speaks, 
The  air,  a  chartered  libertine,  is  still, 
And  the  mute  wonder  lurketh  in  man's  ears 
To  steal  his  sweet  and  honeyed  sentences ; 
So  that  the  art,  and  practick  part  of  life, 
Must  be  the  mistress  to  this  theorick." 

Henry  V.,  Act  i.  Sc.  1. 


CONCLUSION.  145 

We  cannot  argue  with  confidence  on  the 
principles  which  would  guide  us  to  safe  con- 
clusions respecting  ordinary  men,  when  we 
are  reasoning  respecting  one  of  whom  it  was 
truly  said  : 

k'Each  change  of  many-coloured  life  he  drew. 
Exhausted  worlds,  and  then  imagined  new ; 
Existence  saw  him  spurn  her  bounded  reign, 
And  panting  Time  toiled  after  him  in  vain." 

And  now,  my  dear  Mr.  Payne  Collier,  I 
must  conclude.  Long  ago,  I  dare  say,  you 
were  heartily  sorry  that  you  ever  thought  of 
taking  the  opinion  of  counsel  on  this  knotty 
point  ;  and  at  last  you  may  not  only  exclaim, 
"  I  am  no  wiser  than  I  was/'  but  shaking  your 
head,  like  old  DEMIPHO  in  6  Terence/  after 
being  present  at  a  consultation  of  lawyers  on 
the  validity  of  his  son's  marriage,  you  may 
sigh  and  say,  "  Incertior  sum  mult6  quam 
dudum." 

However,  if  my  scepticism  and  my  argu- 
mentation (worthy  of  Serjeant  Eitherside) 
should  stimulate  you  deliberately  to  reconsider 

the  question,  and  to  communicate  your  ma- 

7 


14:6  SHAKESPEARE'S  LEGAL  ACQUIREMENTS. 

tured  judgment  to  the  world,  I  shall  not  have 
doubted  or  hallucinated  in  vain.  By  another 
outpouring  of  your  Shakespearian  lore  you 
may  entirely  convince,  and  at  all  events  you 
will  much  gratify, 

Your  sincere  admirer  and  friend, 
(Signed)  CAMPBELL. 


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his  Gash  Manager  ;  also  for  the  Lawyer,  who  will  here  find  the  exact  Re- 
sponsibilities that  exist  between  the  different  officers  of  Banks  and  the  Clerics, 
and  between  them  and  the  Dealers. 

The  operations  of  the  Clearing-House  are  described  in  detail,  and  illust- 
rated by  a  financial  Chart,  which  exhibits,  in  an  interesting  manner,  the 
fluctuations  of  the  Bank  Loans. 

The  immediate  and  exact  cause  of  the  Panic  o/"1857  is  clearly  demon- 
strated by  the  records  of  the  Clearinq-House,  ana  a  scale  is  presented  by 
which  the  deviation  of  the  volume  of  Bank  Loans  from  an  average  standard 
of  safety  can  be  ascertained  at  a  single  glance. 

History  of  the  State  of  Rhode  Island  and  Providence 

Plantations.    By  SAMUEL  GREENE  ARNOLD.    Vol.  I.    1636 — 1700. 

1  vol.     8vo.     574  pages.     $2.50. 

To  trace  the  rise  and  progress  of  a  State,  the  offspring  of  ideas  that 
were  novel  and  startling,  even  amid  the  philosophical  speculations  of  the 
Seventeenth  Century  ;  whose  birth  was  a  protest  against,  whose  infancy  was 
a  struggle  with,  and  whose  maturity  was  a  triumph  over,  the  retrograde 
tendency  of  established  Puritanism  ;  a  State  that  was  the  second-born  of  per- 
secution, whose  founders  had  been  doubly  tried  in  the  purifying  fire  •  a  State 
which,  more  than  any  other,  has  exerted,  by  the  weight  of  its  example,  an  in- 
fiuence  to  shape  the  political  ideas  of  the  present  day,  whose  moral  power  has 
'been  in  the  inverse  ratio  with  its  material  importance  •  of  which  an  eminent 
Historian  of  the  United  States  has  said  that,  had  its  territory  "  corresponded 
to  the  importance  and  singularity  of  the  principles  of  its  early  existence,  the 
world  would  have  been  filled  with  wonder  at  the  phenomena  of  its  history," 
is  a  task  not  to  be  lightly  attempted  or  hastily  performed.'1'1 — EXTRACT  FEOM 
PEEFACE. 

The  Ministry  of  Life.  By  MARIA  LOUISA  CHARLESWORTH,  Author 
of  "  Ministering  Children."  1  vol.,  12ma,  with  Two  Eng's.,  $1. 
Of  the  "Ministering  Children,"  (the  author's  previous  work,) 
50,000  copies  have  been  sold. 

"  The  higher  walks  of  life,  the  blessedness  of  doing  good,  and  the  paths 
of  usefulness  and  enjoyment,  are  drawn  out  with  beautiful  simplicity,  and 
made  attractive  and  easy  in  the  attractive  pages  of  this  author.  To  do  good, 
to  teacJi  others  how  to  do  good,  to  render  the  home  circle  and  the  neighborhood 
glad  with  the  voice  and  hand  of  Christian  charity,  is  the  aim  of  the  author, 
who  has  great  power  of  description,  a  genuine  love  for  evangelical  religion, 
and  blends  instruction  with  the  story,  so  as  to  give  charm  to  all  he 
N.  Y.  OBSERVER. 


4  D.  APPLET  ON  &  GO:  8  PUBLICATIONS. 

The  Coopers ;  or,  Getting  Under  "Way.     By  ALICE  B. 

HAVEN,  Author  of  "  No  Such  Word  as  Fail,"  "All's  Not  Gold  that 
Glitters,"  etc.,  etc.  1  vol.  12mo.     336  pages.     75  cents. 

"  To  grace  and  freshness  of  style,  Mrs.  Haven  adds  a  genial,  cheerful 
philosophy  of  Life,  and  Naturalness  of  Character  and  Incident,  in  the 
History  of  the  Cooper  Family. 

A  Text  Book  of  Vegetable  and  Animal  Physiology. 

Designed  for  the  use  of  Schools,  Seminaries  and  Colleges  in  the 
United  States.  By  HENRY  GOADBY,  M.  D.,  Professor  of  Vegetable 
and  Animal  Physiology  and  Entomology,  in  the  State  Agricultural 
College  of  Michigan,  &Q.  A  new  edition.  One  handsome  vol., 
8vo.,  embellished  with  upwards  of  450  wood  engravings  (many  of 
them  colored,)  Price,  $2. 

"  The  attempt  to  teach  only  Human  Physiology,  like  a  similar  pro- 
ceeding in  regard  to  Anatomy,  can  only  end  in  failure;  whereas,  if  the 
origin  (so  to  speak}  of  the  organic  structures  in  the  animal  Idngdom,  be 
sought  for  and steadily  pursued  through  all  the  classes,  showing  their  gradual 
complication,  and  the  necessity  for  the  addition  of  accessory  organs,  till  they 
reach  their  utmost  development  and  culminate  in  man,  the  study  may  be  ren- 
dered an  agreeable  and  interesting  one,  and  be  fruitful  in  profitable  results. 

"  Throughout  the  accompanying  pages,  this  principle  haspeen  kept  steadily 
in  view,  and  it  has  been  deemecl  of  more  importance  to  impart  solid  and 
thorough  instruction  on  the  subjects  discussed,  rather  than  embrace  the  whole 
field  of  physiology,  and,  for  want  of  space,  fail  to  do  justice  to  any  part  of 
it."— EXTRACT  FROM  PREFACE. 

The  Physiology  of  Common  Life.  By  GEORGE  HENRY 
LEWES,  Author  of  "  Seaside  Studies,"  u  Life  of  Goethe,"  etc.  No.  1. 
Just  Ready.  Price  10  cents. 

EXTRACT  FEOM  PEOSPECTUS. 

No  scientific  subject  can  be  so  important  to  Man  as  that  of  his  men  Life. 
No  Jcnoivledge  can  be  so  incessantly  appealed  to  by  the  incidents  of  every  day, 
as  the  knowledge  of  the  processes^  by  which  he  lives  and  acts.  At  every 
moment  he  is  in  danger^  of  disobeying  laws  which,  when  disobeyed,  may  bring 
years  of  suffering,  decline  of  powers,  premature  decay.  Sanitary  reformers 
preach  in  vain,  because  they  preach  to  a  public  which  does  not  understand  the 
laws  of  life — laws  as  rigorous  as  those  of  Gravitation  or  Motion.  Even  the 
sad  experience  of  others  yields  us  no  lessons,  unless  we  understand  the  prin- 
ciples involved.  If 'one  Man  is  seen  to  suffer  from  vitiated  air,  another  is 
seen  to  endure  it  loithout  apparent  harm  ;  a  third  concludes  that  "it  is  all 
chance"  and  trusts  to  that  chance.  Had  he  understood  the  principle  involved, 
he  would  not  have  been  left  to  chance — his  first  lesson  in  swimming  would' not 
have  been  a  shipwreck. 

The  work  ivill  be  illustrated  with  from  20  to  25  woodcuts,  to  assist  the 
exposition.  It  will  be  published  in  monthly  numbers,  uniform  ivith  Johnston's 
"  Chemistry  of  Common  Life.'1'' 


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